


Blood and Ash, Iron and Salt

by Silverfishy



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Dreamwalking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Force-Feeding, Hate Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kinda?, M/M, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Touch-Starved, but like gently because he's never had one before, somebody please give lancelot a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:21:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28268301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverfishy/pseuds/Silverfishy
Summary: You see? The fire will never harm you.Soft words, soft hands around his own. His mother’s? He does not recall. His childhood is a moth-eaten shawl more void than fabric, and he remembers neither faces nor names.
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 131





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched Cursed for the first time three days ago and have been able to think about nothing but our favourite tortured soul ever since.

There’s blood in his mouth. It’s bitter iron, but he cannot muster the strength to raise his head and spit it out. Instead he swallows, rather than risk it hitting the child sitting in the circle of his arms. The mouthful of blood goes down sluggish and his stomach rolls, but the ache that accompanies the muscle spasm is dull rather than the sharp bite of a gut wound. Thank God, for such a wound would likely cause him to bleed out before they reach their destination, whereas the cracked ribs, possible lung puncture and certain concussion will allow him time to deliver his charge before he crawls off into some hole to die. That is, assuming the fey do not murder him on sight.

Either way, die he will, there can be no doubt about it. It is all that he deserves. He has turned against his brothers, his own Father, against God himself, and been justly punished for it, though the true suffering he knows awaits him in the afterlife once his wounds do their work. He has, in his more delirious moments, wondered if it was not some kind of poetic justice that his eternal punishment will be at the hands of the same force which twists inside of him. His affinity with the flame is yet more proof of his demon birth.

 _You see? The fire will never harm you._ Soft words, soft hands around his own. His mother’s? He does not recall. His childhood is a moth-eaten shawl more void than fabric, and he remembers neither faces nor names. _Hold out your hands, Lancelot._

 _“Hold out your hands, boy.”_ Father Carden intones, voice cold and firm, and there is the agony of the whip across his fingers, the shaking digits pulled straight by the Father's large unyielding hands, until he is strong enough to bear the purification without flinching. The welts had lasted for days, and his training masters had not allowed him to skip sword practice – the leather grips had never been the same, drenched in blood.

It does not bode well for the progress of his concussion that he is dwelling on such memories, nor that they press upon him at all. He blinks the echoes away, flexes the memories from his fingers and tries to focus on the road, to keep it from it's alarming whirl by force of will. 

His hands are on the reins, but the fey child’s own bare fingers nestle next to his. His gloves are torn – when did that happen? – and the touch of the boy’s hand to his own exposed skin is a shocking line of heat, almost painful. His skin must be torn along with the glove, for there is no other explanation why the touch of another being should burn so, but the effort required to even shift his hands away seems all too much in the moment. Thus he allows it to continue, just a little longer.

The small body against his chest is warm too, though not as warm as it should be – the both of them have not eaten in some hours and he is vaguely aware that children require more regular feeding than adults. More than the body heat, however, it is the weight that surprises him with its comfort. He has hefted corpses, body-slammed his opponents in battle and hauled prisoners across Goliath’s great flanks more times than he can count – had done so only hours ago, in fact, with the Green Knight. But the child’s weight is slight, compact. Tired, he thinks, and pressed up against one who should be his enemy, yet the boy holds no tension in his small form, letting his back rest against Lancelot’s cuirass with astonishing ease. He’s given the child his own dagger to replace the knife taken by the Red Brothers in preparation for Salt’s kitchens, and it had seemed to calm whatever fears the boy had left.

Percival, he reminds himself. The child’s name is Percival. And he… he’d revealed his own name too, spoken it aloud like it wasn’t a dusty secret nigh-discarded from long disuse. The only names given to weapons are fearful ones, and the Weeping Monk has been God’s Sword for so long the sibilant sounds of his first name feel almost ill-fitting.

At least he won’t have to wear it long. Corpses need no names at all. 

He drifts, allowing his consciousness to falter until the feel of the leather bridle in his hands, the line of fire where Percival’s skin touches his, and the weight of his body are the only real things in the world. He leads Goliath by sense and instinct alone, following the call he can only perceive when half-awake towards the west, towards the fey. 

The sun drops, and Percival’s weight becomes heavier as the boy falls into a shifting sleep, still nestled in his arms. Lancelot is almost afraid to move at all for fear of waking him, but when the boy’s fingers go slack and fall from the reins to his lap Lancelot finds his hand feeling oddly cold without the skin pressed against it. He braces his shoulders more firmly against the cool night breeze beginning to blow across the hills, ignores the grinding of his ribs at the movement and the way Percival’s sleeping weight pushes against something sharp, grits his teeth against the groan fighting to make its way out his throat, and presses on.

There is no time to stop. No reason to save himself the pain, especially if it permits the exhausted child relief. His only task now is to see Percival delivered to his family, or whatever is left of one after the Red Paladin’s scourges, after Lancelot’s own actions had taken so many. 

As the old saying went; you can rest when you’re dead.

-

Gawain has just bent over the map table when the scout rushes in. She's a Moon Wing by the name of Faren, a young one, and clearly terrified as she hurries over her words so fast it takes a moment to understand what she is saying.

“What? Are you certain it was him?” He demands.

She nods. “His scent is blood and ash, Green Knight, there can be no mistaking. He was on horseback, entering the forest outskirts to the east.”

“What does this mean?” Kaze hisses. “Another invasion? We cannot afford to move again so soon, Gawain, not when Arthur and the other stragglers are still returning from the beaches. Half our best fighters fell to the Ice King’s forces, and you and I cannot defend the Fey Covert by ourselves.”

Gawain opens his mouth to protest, but she slams her hands down on the table between them. “You may have been given the all-clear by Pym after your miraculous return last night, but you were with the Red Paladins for days. I cannot believe you are at your full fighting strength.”

“If need be, we can fight.” Gawain assures her. “But perhaps it will not come to that. Faren, did you see any Red Paladins with the Monk?”

“No!” Her eyes are wide. “His horse was alone. But…” She hesitates for a moment. “He rode with another. A child.”

Could it be? Gawain feels his heart leap, but quashes the hope that springs up like summer weeds. He has already shed bitter tears in his tent the night before at learning Squirrel had not returned from the Red Paladin camp, and the grief lurks in his chest even now like a hollow, sucking wound. He cannot bear another disappointment in this matter.

“Come then.” He orders. “Kaze, fetch the best of whatever fighters we have left, and meet me at the edge of the Covert.”

Their small force takes only minutes to assemble, and a still-shaking with nerves Faren leads them out into the forest proper. The dawn has begun stretching through the trees, the shadows long and the morning chorus of birdsong beginning to echo through the branches. Their footsteps make no sound in the undergrowth, but Gawain knows it will do nothing to give them a stealth advantage – after all, their prey can smell them coming. 

The thickets of the centre of the forest give way to the more diffuse treeline of the outskirts, and when Faren whistles a jackdaw trill Gawain holds up a hand for them to stop. 

They are at the peak of a ridge, looking down onto the forest path, when around the corner comes the slow, steady tread of the dark horse of the Weeping Monk himself. The great beast’s steps are measured, unhurried, but Gawain can see the tremble in its flanks from having been ridden for too long without rest. Such a beautiful animal would not take such ill-treatment on a regular basis, so what circumstances can have led the Monk to ignore the needs of his horse now?

Beside him Kaze bares her teeth, and one of the other fighters, a Tusk archer, draws his bow and sets a quivering arrow aimed at the horse rider. “Wait.” Gawain hushes, and the two of them turn swiftly to look at him, incredulity painted across their expressions.

“Green Knight, this may be our only chance to get him unaware!” The Tusk snarls.

“Catching him unaware is impossible.” Gawain murmurs back. “He must know we’re here.”

“Look!” Kaze interrupts.

The horse is closer now, its riders in full view of their hidden vantage point, and the bundle of dark cloth atop the saddle resolves itself into two distinct forms. The larger is the hooded figure they all know and despise, motionless, face bowed and invisible. But as they watch, the smaller figure uncurls itself from its space nestled against the other’s chest and even now stretches its arms, hood falling back to reveal a young, yawning face.

“Squirrel!” Gawain hisses. His breath catches, and the elation threatens to seize his heart enough to make him cry out to the boy at once. How is he here? And with the Weeping Monk – Could they have ridden together here from the Red Paladin camp? Was this some kind of trap?

His thoughts fly faster and more numerous than starlings, but he has not the time to sort them before there is another snarl behind him and the twang of a bowstring; the arrow shoots through the air and before their eyes buries in the shoulder of the Weeping Monk.

Squirrel’s head darts round birdlike, eyes wide and frantic, and his cry splits the peace of the forest as the Monk slumps sideways and falls from the horse. The distance from the great animal’s back to the ground is considerable, and the body hits the earth with an audible thump. The Monk does not get back up.

The boy’s piercing yells are becoming anguished, and Gawain throws caution to the wind, leaping down the verge to where Squirrel is scrambling from the horse. “Squirrel!”

“Gawain!” The boy’s eyes are round with shock, but fear and desperation retake their places almost at once as he crouches over the Monk, a knife clutched in his hand.

The blade is not his own, Gawain notices distantly. It’s too simple, too utilitarian, with a red cross engraved upon the pommel. “Squirrel, come here!” He orders, beckoning, but the boy remains hunched over the body defiantly, almost protective.

“Get away from him now!” Kaze calls, and Gawain hears the others clambering down the ridge to join them.

“No, don’t hurt him!” Squirrel insists, moving so his body is between the Monk and them, between the three sets of arrows now fixed upon the prone form waiting for the smallest sign it still contains life. “You can’t, he saved me!”

There is a moment of baffled silence as they take in that information, Gawain the only one of those gathered who has any inkling of why the notorious enemy of the fey might do such a thing. A suspicion is growing in his mind, and he relaxes his stance a little, taking a closer look at the dagger clenched in Squirrel’s fingers. He recalls the ease with which the boy had apparently been sleeping, pressed against the Monk’s front. 

“Child, one good deed does not excuse the thousands of crimes this wretch has committed against our people.” Kaze was shaking her head. “He cannot be allowed to live.”

“Please, you have to! He’s fey!”

Gawain closes his eyes. He has no doubt that Kaze will call off the rest of the warriors now that the Monk’s secret is out – she knows as well as he does that they are too few now in number to kill even a single one of the fey unnecessarily. But explaining this to the rest of the camp… he was going to have a devil of a time the next few days, there could be no doubt about it.

He sighs. "Bind him and bring him along. This is not a decision we can make alone, but if that wound isn't treated the choice will be taken out of our hands."

 _The boy is safe._ Relief makes him lightheaded as he watches Kaze and the Tusk archer haul the Monk up, unconscious and unflinching even as the movement must jostle the arrowhead in his shoulder. Squirrel is _safe_. Thank the Hidden for small mercies.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel in most Cursed fics that everybody forgives Lancelot unrealistically easily. Gawain is noble but he's a fierce warrior in a brutal war, and he isn't going to just accept a notorious murderer and assassin because of a single act or conversation.

The last time he disobeyed had been when he was eight years old. 

He had already been with the Red Brothers for some time; his memories remain unclear as to precisely when he had been rescued from the nest of demons into which he’d been born. The sounds of the Ash Tongue had already been fading from his mouth and his mind, but every now and then a bird flying up out of a hedgerow or a sudden animal cry would startle him, and the words would roll off his tongue before he realised he wasn’t speaking the language of his Brothers. 

Every time it happened, he found himself dragged to the river and pushed down in the reeds at the edge until his knees were soaked. Hands held him still, a punishing grip in his hair and fingers like iron holding his mouth open. The soap made him retch, his eyes watering, his throat closing up in protest until the choice was swallow or suffocate. The bile he brought up tasted of lye.

_Wash that filthy demon-speak out of your mouth, boy. You taint us all by making us hear it. Do you wish to be the cause of your Brothers’ sin?_

Determined, desperate to please, he had closed up his mouth and spoken only when questions required a verbal answer, turned himself inward and resolved to keep his Brothers’ souls safe the only way he knew how. Father Carden had seemed to approve of this new, silent version of his charge, and for a while things were better. Surprises no longer made him shout, and the soap was kept to the laundry houses.

The only place his control loosed was in dreams.

It always began the same; walking through a forest set aflame. The trees roared, the sap crackling and spitting embers skyward, and the tender beds of moss under his feet dry and brown. In the dream, he touched the branches, watching the fire flicker around his fingers like a playful friend, drawing him deeper into the conflagration. He stepped between the groaning, splitting trunks glowing red and gold from within, until he found himself at the heart of the forest. There in the clearing, he looked up to the sky and saw the full moon gazing down, and the old man in the moon had the same dark tear tracks on his cheeks as Lancelot himself. In the dream, he stared at the weeping moon until the forest around him was all ash as far as the eye could see.

He always woke up screaming. The cries would tumble from his lips, and along with them words, words he had tried and tried to forget, pleas and promises in Ash Tongue torn from him until his throat was raw.

He had been beaten, the first few times, with increasing severity until it perhaps became clear even to Father Carden that the dreams truly were involuntary. Then he was instructed to speak the holy prayers instead when he felt the demon tongue come upon him, but even that was impossible, for he was so weak to the memories of his old life that it would take him long moments to regain his faculties after waking.

Things came to a head when the Father was called away to a council in the south, Lancelot left in the charge of another. The man’s name was Brother Avery, and even at eight Lancelot had taken the measure of him as one determined to profit by others’ misfortune. He had dreaded falling asleep with Brother Avery around for fear of dreaming, and managed to subsist for several days on snatches of rest here and there.

But no body is meant to live without sleep, much less the growing body of an eight year old, and eventually he had succumbed.

It had been one of the worst nights he could remember; the terror so stark upon wakening that he howled like a rabid dog, his eyes rolled back in his head and muscles caught in spasm. For the alarmed Brother who had not heard him speak a word during the days preceding, it must have looked horrific. He had burst into Lancelot’s tent with holy water and a crucifix and the words of exorcism already half out of his mouth.

Neither begging nor protestation could convince Brother Avery that the hateful words spewed from Lancelot’s lips were not signs of a demonic possession. Eventually, even Lancelot himself became uncertain, and when the priest bound his arms behind his back he offered no resistance, too resigned to another soaping when he realised they were headed not for the river, but the campfire.

His head spun as he was forced to his knees before the flames; the echoes of his dream haunting the edges of his conscious mind. The few Red Brothers gathered around the fire stopped their conversations to watch, and his gaze darted between them but found only mild interest in the proceedings.

With wide eyes, he followed the thrust of the tongs into the ash at the fire’s base, and when a sunset-bright coal was withdrawn he realised what was to be Brother Avery’s punishment.

He had the presence of mind to struggle. Indeed, it was instinctive, a thoughtless response to the cruel jeers of the gathered Brothers and the familiar grip on his hair and jaw. But some weak part of him relaxed at the realisation his demonic nature would protect him from the pain. He hated it, but could not bring himself to long for the agony instead, and as the coal was brutally shoved between his teeth the tears which made a mockery of his birthmarks were for his own worthless, wicked soul.

They had held his jaw closed for several seconds, and he’d screamed for them, for the purification he was denied by his nature. When finally he let himself fall limp they allowed him to spit out the coal, and it sizzled as it hit the dew-damp grass. He bent over it in supplication, wishing he might press his forehead against it and burn the weakness in his mind away, wishing that fire was enough to steal the demon tongue from his lips.

By rights he ought to have revealed the Brother's mistake, but his weakness and wretchedness made him too fearful even for that. He’d kept his mouth shut the rest of the time Father Carden was away, and thanked God with shame that Brother Avery hadn’t desired to check up on his penance’s progress. When the Father returned, the old man had raised an eyebrow at Lancelot when Avery had described his punishment, but not enlightened the Brother of his error. 

Alone in the tent, Father Carden had finally bid him open his mouth, had pressed his fingers against Lancelot’s unmarred lips, his tongue, his palate, tasting of iron and salt and the dust of the road. His face was all disappointment, and Lancelot could not bear it.

_Please, Father._

_What is it, my son?_

_Help me find another way to cleanse myself._

The dreams never left, but the Ash Tongue died a little more with every stroke of the whip against his back, until his screams upon waking brought nothing but blessed silence to his mind.

-

Gawain has just finished putting Squirrel to bed when he hears the cry.

It’s quiet, muffled as if by more than merely the walls of a tent, but he has tracked deer through the buzz of the forest in springtime and following the sound to its source is nothing.

He isn’t entirely surprised when he ends up back at the Monk’s tent. 

He and Kaze agreed it would be best not to bring the Monk inside the covert and risk untoward interactions between the murderer and the grieving fey folk within. Instead, they had procured a travel tent and set up what was half a makeshift cell and half a makeshift healing house.

A sleep-addled and grumpy Pym had been roused and set to the task of looking at his wounds, but even in slumber the Monk had resisted the healer’s touch, trying to move away from the hands plucking at his jerkin and cloak. In the end, they hadn’t been able to do more than rip a hole in the shirt over the arrow-wound, and having pulled threads of fabric from the flesh press a poultice to the skin. The Monk had groaned at the exposure and the treatment, but the sound had been as much fear as pain, and Gawain had found himself shooing the young woman from the tent and promising she could treat her patient properly when he awoke.

He had left the Monk only long enough to ensure Squirrel actually joined the other children and slept, but Kaze seems unsurprised to see him back again.

“No-one else has entered.” She informs him as he strides up, and holds the tent flap aside. “And I will ensure you are not disturbed.” He nods, places a hand on her shoulder in thanks and she returns her sharp gaze back to watching for intruders as he enters.

The room smells like blood; his nostrils flare as the scent overwhelms him for a moment, takes him back to the hunt, to the battlefield. The Monk lays on his side, uninjured shoulder to the ground and wrists still bound behind him with the clever knots Gawain has yet to learn how Kaze ties. His eyes are closed, but his breathing is too fast for a man asleep and so Gawain sits at his side and waits. 

He’s far enough away that there is no possibility of the Monk reaching him, even if his hands were not bound. Yet when the man gets tired of feigning slumber and those eyes the colour of clear seas snap open, Gawain nearly jerks back. It’s too ingrained, the mistrust of his long-time enemy, for a little thing like rescuing the boy who’d become surprisingly dear to him to change Gawain’s habits. Kaze was correct – one good deed did not undo a thousand evil ones.

They say nothing, merely stare at one another for a few moments, tension thrumming between them like the air before a lightning storm. Then the Monk seems to sag, closing his eyes and letting a hint of exhaustion play across his face, a tiredness so bone-deep Gawain feels the echo of it in his own spirit. It is alarming, to have his foe display such weakness in front of him; the sign of a man who knows that either he or his opponent will not long live to have it revealed.

Gawain expects the Monk to ask questions, to attempt to discover whether the Fey are his captors or his allies, or perhaps to offer his knowledge of the Red Paladins as a trade for his freedom. He expects another player in this strange political game they have all been dragged into; yet this is not the look of a formidable warrior, but a broken man.

“Will you allow the healer to see to you?” He murmurs, and is met once again with those sea-blue eyes for a moment before the gaze is cast away.

“Save your herbs.” The monk whispers, his words slurring a little, and his voice is the rasp of a whetstone on steel, dry and pained. His eyes wander, unfocused, a frown creasing his brow.

“Hold.” Gawain orders. “Look at me a moment.” He reaches out, telegraphing his movement clearly before grasping the side of the Monk’s face and peering into his eyes, squinting in the half-light that filters through the tent fabric. The Monk jerks his head back at Gawain’s touch, but the movement must agitate the arrow-wound in his shoulder for he hisses through gritted teeth, submitting to the light but firm grip on his jaw.

He seems dazed, Gawain thinks. Likely a concussion, though whether it was falling from that beast of a horse or something else which caused it he is uncertain. Either way, the man will need a constant companion if he is to be watched for risk of fitting, and as he runs through the options Gawain internally groans as he realises there are very few qualified to perform such a task. Or rather, very few he is willing to put at risk by having them in the same tent as the Weeping Monk.

Kaze regards him inquiringly when he sticks his head out, and he appraises her of the situation. “He should probably see the healer again. I suspect he’s hiding some of his injuries, but I don’t think it wise he be left alone. I am sorry to ask this of you my friend, but it may be that until we know if he still poses a threat, you and I will have to watch over him closely. Especially if Pym or Squirrel is inside.” 

Because of course the boy will want to see how his rescuer fares. Gawain sighs, scrubs the back of his head and wishes he’d gotten more sleep the night before. “I suppose I’ll see about finding some food.”

There is a hand placed upon his arm. “Let me.” Kaze says. “I can see you want to keep your own eyes upon him.” He grips her forearm in thanks, and she slips away. There are the distant sounds of the covert beginning to awaken, but as yet no visitors to see their strange captive. The grey dawn has given way to kindly morning sun.

Gawain has no illusions that the Monk’s presence will remain a secret. After all, Faren and the others saw his capture first-hand. But at least they may have a little time to get the man’s wounds and other physical needs seen to before the curious or the vengeful turn up to try and gawk.

There is a soft sound from within. He turns, to see the Monk faceplant ungracefully into the mat, having apparently tried to sit up. The prone position leaves his back to Gawain and the Monk struggles to rise to his knees, his bound wrists making the effort tortuous. His hood falls back to reveal the brand on his scalp, and Gawain ought to help, or to step out again to give the man some dignity, but instead he stands captivated at the display until a pained groan escapes the Monk unwillingly and Gawain's reverie is broken.

The Monk has managed to get his knees under him, but his wheezing breath is laboured and as his eyes roll back Gawain has to dart forward and support the man’s shoulder to prevent another collapse. There’s another grunt, and Gawain realises in his haste he has grasped the arm injured by the arrow, switching sides with a soft curse.

The Weeping Monk’s endurance, his resilience to pain is astonishing. The breath which rasps from the man’s lungs smells strongly of iron, of blood, and it makes the battle-rage rise in Gawain again; to have his enemy so close and so weak.

He settles the Monk into a more comfortable position, legs stretched out before him even as his hands remain behind his back. The bindings must wrench his shoulder, and Gawain feels a flash of pity for it, yet for the sake of all the fey of the covert he cannot allow the Monk his freedom just yet.

A cough alerts him to Kaze’s return, and she passes him a deep bowl and a hunk of bread; the scent of stew, salt and game meat, fills the air.

“Are you certain of this?” She murmurs as he takes the food. “You know once you have broken bread with him…”

“Arthur and the others may not arrive for a day or two yet, and only the Hidden know when Nimue will return to us. Is he to starve until then?” He murmurs back and she tilts her head to the side, conceding the point and leaving him to his vigil once more.

The dull gaze of the Monk is affixed to the floor, and he betrays no hint of interest in the bowl of stew set before him. Yet the body reveals what the mind will not – a growl emanates from the region of the man's stomach and the wince he cannot hide is echoed by Gawain’s wry smile as he settles opposite.

“You understand what it is, to break bread together?” He asks the Monk, and receives a weary glance. “I know not what rituals of our people you have been taught.” He makes sure to stress the _our_ , and sees the slightest narrowing of the Monk’s gaze in response.

When a verbal answer is not forthcoming, he continues. “The sharing of bread and salt is a sign of hospitality. By feeding you thus, we are welcoming you into our home, and placing on you the responsibility of being a fair and gracious guest.” Here he allows himself a grimace. “Due to the circumstances, a perfect trust between us is impossible, but I offer this as a sign of our good intentions; that we eat from the same bowl.”

Having spoken, he takes the spoon and eats; the mouthful of stew is perfect after the long night’s exertions, savoury and fragrant with herbs, the broth salted and rich. He tears the bread in half, and eats from it – a little on the dry side, but the exile of the fey and the destruction of the mills means it’s a rare commodity in the covert at the moment. He’s grateful once again for Kaze’s ingenuity.

Yet when he offers the food to the Monk, raising a spoonful of bread soaked in stew high to the man’s mouth, he receives nothing but the same weary glare.

He frowns. “I will not force you.” 

There is a whistle like the wind through trees in winter as the Monk speaks. “I cannot break bread with a… with you.”

Something hard forms in Gawain’s heart. “With what? With a _demon_? Why?” He spits. “Because I am fey? The same heritage runs through us both.”

When he answers, the Monk’s voice is naught but a whisper. “ _For we, though many, are of one body; for we all partake of one bread._ The breaking of bread is a holy covenant; a ritual to demonstrate unity of believers in God. I cannot share it with you.”

The outburst surprises Gawain, but the Monk seems to have said his piece – he leans forward and bows his head once more. The stark rejection is a slap in the face, and anger surges through Gawain. The words of their enemies, used to mock the sacred hospitality rites. It is an insult not to be borne.

He clenches his jaw against the harsh words that would spill forth, but takes up instead the crust, and reaches out once more to grip the Monk’s jaw. Where before his touch was light, now anger makes him rough, and he presses his thumb at the joint to force the Monk’s mouth open. 

He expects resistance, and for a moment there is fight in the man’s baleful eyes, the tendons in his neck straining. Gawain is prepared to counter any sudden moves that the Weeping Monk may withdraw even with his hands bound, so it is a shock when instead of a struggle he is met with submission. The tension goes out of the man, his jaw falling open, his eyes losing what the little fire they had, until it is as though Gawain holds a corpse already.

The bread is pushed past unresisting lips, and Gawain feels the brush of the Monk’s tongue against his finger. He is prepared to snatch it back at the first sign the man might bite, but there is nothing but placid, empty obedience. He closes the Monk’s jaw, and the man swallows without needing to be told.

Horror grips Gawain, a vice around his heart, bile in his throat. He drops his hands like the Monk’s skin is fire-hot rather than cool, and stands, falling back. 

The Weeping Monk does nothing. The empty eyes stare at nothing, the pained breaths so faint they can barely be heard, drowned out even just by the birdsong outside. Gawain feels unease like insects crawling up his spine.

What has he done? To disgrace the hospitality rites so – and what is more, to force food upon his captive, his _guest_ , when he had given his word he would not. These are not the actions of brotherhood at all. _What has he done?_

Ashamed, aghast; Gawain turns tail and flees.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments! They feed my desire to keep writing <3

Lancelot drifts.

The name sits awkwardly on his shoulders; once, the Red Brothers had plucked it from his mind like a ripe plum from a branch, and clinging to its memory is the only thing keeping him anchored to the present. It belongs to someone else; a boy from long ago with a laugh like a blackbird.

His head pounds like a cathedral belltower, and he can feel the dizziness coming on once more. Sweat beads down his spine, though the air is cool – a telltale first sign of fever. The echo of the Green Knight’s grasp remains on his skin like a brand, but there are no more touches, no more bread, and eventually he surfaces.

When his mind clears enough for him to take in his surroundings, he is alone. It is blessed relief.

The stew lies abandoned on the mat before him, the bread discarded nearby, yet he cannot bring himself to kneel and eat from the ground like a dog. Dimly, he begins the rote categorisation of his aches and pains, but gives up when he recalls that such an action no longer has use. 

The food has no purpose either. One doesn’t stoke a fire all but ash.

That the fey should take him captive had not been an outcome he considered on the long rise from the Red Encampment. He is a broken, useless thing and their enemy, with the blood of hundreds of fey kind on his hands; justice should have seen him cut down the moment the boy was clear.

The offer of a healer had been even more baffling, and he suspects a trap in it. He knows the fey are few in number, harried and hunted from every side, with need enough for their herbs that they ought not to waste it on him. Yet a poultice cools the heat radiating from his shoulder even now, and the offer of food had been genuine, as far as he could perceive. Certainly the female warrior had had no guile about her when she brought the bowl in.

The Green Knight – he is a far more complex uncertainty.

Father Carden had received the news of the notorious fey warrior’s death at the hands of Brother Salt with disappointment; the Green Knight remained tight-lipped to his final agonised breath. Lancelot had felt only hollow at the knowledge, the seed the Knight had planted already smothered and withering.

Was it possible that suffering had redeemed his soul, the way Father Carden was always preaching, and he’d been raised from death? Lancelot shook away such thoughts. No – It was far more likely that demonic magic of the wolf-blood witch was the cause of his resurrection.

He does not blame the Green Knight for his actions – had Lancelot been the one to take the other man captive for the Red Brotherhood, the Knight would have faced far worse treatment – had died by it, in fact.

If Lancelot ever had any pride, he left it in the blood and dirt at the feet of the Trinity Guard.

He tests the bonds on his wrists, but whomever tied them was expert and they only tighten with his struggle. Without the cataloguing of wounds to distract him, he finds himself slipping into the kind of meditative state he associates with prayer, and gives himself over to it, murmuring Father Carden’s catechisms without sound. 

It’s late morning when he’s roused by the sounds of others outside the tent – the light filtering in has the glorious luminance of reflected forest green. His visitor is a woman, and she enters accompanied by his guard, the same formidable-looking warrior from before.

“Hi, uh.” The young woman starts, but then looks awkwardly between him and the guard. “What are we calling him? What do we call you?”

What does it matter what he tells them? “Lancelot.” Every time he speaks the word it comes a little easier.

The young woman takes a deep breath and huffs it out, kneeling down before him. The warrior stays by the door, arms crossed and expression still and impenetrable as stone. “It’s funny, I never thought of you having a normal name. I’m Pym. That’s Kaze. Ah, I don’t know if you knew that?” She’s brought with her a bag and begins unpacking, revealing cloths, jars and tools. With her long unbound hair and petulant frown she doesn’t have the look of a torturer.

“I require no healing.” He murmurs.

Flipping her tresses aside from where they catch in the leather ties of the satchel, she looks at him unimpressed. “Yeah, see about that – you’re a mess, actually? I may not be great at this healing thing yet but I know one arrow shouldn’t have knocked you out. And when I set that poultice-“ She points at his shoulder, and he’s reminded once again of its cool relief on his skin, better than any herbal remedy of the Red Brothers. Of the fey herbs they’ve already spent on him. “I could tell you’ve got other bits hurting as well. If you’d only let us take your armour and things off-“

“No.” It comes out sharper than he intends, and the guard – Kaze? – narrows her eyes. 

It gets him another sigh and an eyeroll from Pym the healer. “Fine. You know, it’s not like I have some great yearning to see you up and walking around camp anyway.” She bites her lip, gaze drifting back to his shoulder. “At least let me re-set that before I go?”

What harm could it be, to let her? As long as she spent nothing new. He could play the gracious patient for his captors. He nods.

Kaze helps, and together the two of them uncover the gash in his shirt once more, Pym’s fingers pulling apart the threads tangled in the oil of the poultice. Kaze’s hands are cool against his chest, holding the fabric open while Pym works, cleaning the still-oozing blood away and pushing the packed herbs back into place over the worst of arrow-torn flesh.

He is unaccustomed to the touch of women. The Red Brothers had accepted none among their number, and the human women of the towns they had passed through fled from him, from the terror of his face and his name. There were times he had been on solo excursions, far from the Brothers, where he could have sought paid company, but Father Carden’s castigations had echoed in his head and turned his mind from that road. He is a monk in truth as well as in name.

Their fingers on him burn the same way the boy’s had. He thinks to blame it on the wound, but Pym slips at one point and grasps his leg to steady herself, and the echo of the pressure is dizzying long after her hand is withdrawn. Kaze’s touch, firm and unyielding, makes him feel as though he is tethered to the earth, the skin beneath her fingers alive in a way he has never felt before.

There are faint tremors running down his spine by the time they pull away, and he fights to keep them hidden. The uneaten food has been spirited away without his notice, and it’s replaced with a skin of water – dizzied by their attentions, he hasn’t the presence of mind to deny her when Kaze raises it to his lips.

-

Gawain is in what passes for the war council when Pym finds him again.

The reports are coming in from the beaches; Arthur will be here within a day, and the scouts report he travels with the fearsome viking queen, lady Red Spear. Their combined forces number perhaps a hundred – along with the children and non-combatants the fey faction totals at two hundred and fifty souls.

The covert is running low on supplies; the hunters are the only ones keeping the food coming in – the farms are burned, the mills gone, the orchards and fishing villages razed. They have enough healing herbs for the inhabitants of the covert now, but those stocks will dwindle once the warriors with their battle-wounds return, nor do they have the skilled hands to use them. There is a reason Pym is one of the foremost healers in the camp now – most of the true medicine men and women died in the Red Paladin attacks, and the surviving Moon Wing matriarch Yeva cannot train more so swiftly.

Nobody has seen or heard from Nimue, or Morgana, or Merlin. The Red Paladin camp had been destroyed by some kind of explosion, and there had been a terrible thunderstorm on the mountains to the north that some scouts had said carried the tang of magic in the air, but none of their magicians have returned to them and the fey are starting to fear the worst for their Queen.

Gawain’s miraculous return to the camp the previous night had been the first scrap of hope they’d had in days.

When she stomps into the council like a miniature thundercloud, Pym’s interruption is almost a welcome relief from the strain of decisionmaking – the few other Fey Elders have a tendency to defer to Gawain even when he knows less than nothing about the complexities of the problems involved.

“Gawain, you have to talk to him.”

The Elders are disgruntled to be so disturbed, but Gawain ushers her out of the chamber. There can be no doubt to whom she refers. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

She throws her hands skywards. “He’s refusing to eat! And refusing healing! He keeps going on about how he’s not worth the herbs, even when I’ve told him we have enough to treat everyone in camp, and-“

“Pym, he’s right.” Gawain mutters, then holds her hands up at the scandalised look she gives him. “I’m not saying he shouldn’t be healed, but he’s right that herbs are precious now. We have enough for those present, but when Arthur’s fighters return…” He trails off and lets her fill in that left unspoken. Her face creases in unhappiness.

“But we can’t just let him die, right? That’s not… I mean, we’re better than that. Even if he is the worst.”

“We are better than that.” If he says it with enough conviction, Gawain can almost convince himself. He pushes away the memory of the Monk’s unresisting jaw in his hand, the touch of tongue to his fingertip.

Pym still looks uncomfortable. “There’s something else too. It’s not exactly… a secret, that he’s here, you know? And people are angry. Like, _really_ angry. I mean, I’m angry at him too, he burned down my village and killed every- everyone-“ 

She wraps her arms around herself, and Gawain’s suddenly struck by how young she is. How young they all are. Pym should have been chasing Sky Folk boys around the marketplace and braiding flower crowns, not stitching up the murderer of her family.

He places a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she leans into it, but the half-smile he receives is tired and wan. She’s lost her best friend too – Nimue is an absence like a missing tooth for both of them.

When her breathing evens out, she continues. “I think some of them might try something. Not all of us are as noble as you, Gawain.” Another wry smile. “So you need to get him to show us whatever he’s hiding that makes him breathe like his lungs are full of fish guts and darning needles.”

Gawain takes the air of the camp as he walks back to the Monk’s tent, and it doesn’t take much to see that Pym is right. There are whispered conversations in corners, hushed the moment he comes into view.

He’s restless by the time he reaches the tent, and has a moment of panic when he hears the chirping voice of Squirrel coming from within loud and clear before he sees the flap lift and is met by Kaze’s cool gaze. He pauses, listening.

“-And then you were like, _shing_ and you cut that big one’s head off, but then that other one sneaked up behind you and got you in the back and I was like ‘ _hey, stop right there!_ ’ and-“

“You were brave.” The Monk’s voice is low, soft and surprisingly pleasant, unguarded. 

“I’m a knight now, you know.” Squirrel’s voice is muffled. Like he’s talking with his mouth full, and Gawain’s stomach clenches. “You’ll have to call me Ser. Ser Squirrel.”

“Ser Percival.” There’s _fondness_ in the Monk’s tone, and Gawain’s eyes widen. Squirrel revealed his true name, the name he hates, to this man? “A noble title. But who knighted you?”

“Gawain, the Green Knight.” Squirrel answers, unafraid, still speaking through the food. “He’s the greatest warrior of the fey. Even my sister – that’s Nimue – isn’t as good, even though she’s got that weird sword. You’ve met him, right?”

The Monk is silent, and Gawain recalls unwillingly the many entanglements he and the Weeping Monk have had. Does _I tortured his comrade once to blackmail him into giving himself up_ or _I killed a whole family to lure him into a trap, then delivered him to torture and death_ count as meeting?

“Oh, sorry, did you want some? I’m always hungry after fighting.” Squirrel seems not to have noticed the grave silence. “Here, I know Kaze says your hands have to stay tied.”

Gawain surges forward, and enters the tent in time to see the Monk accept the slice of apple from Squirrel’s trusting hand to his mouth. His skin has regained a little colour and his eyes are clear as they dart up at his entrance. Gawain’s gaze is drawn to his lips, his throat as he swallows the fruit down, the tongue that comes out to lick traces of juice away.

“Gawain!” Squirrel is sat on his knees next to the Monk, cutting up pieces of apple with the long dagger he’d seen the boy with earlier, the one adorned with a red cross on the pommel. He grins up at Gawain and the scratch on his forehead already looks improved.

He’s so full of life, sat unafraid next to a man so steeped in death.

“Ser Percival, how fares our guest?” He joins them on the floor, armour creaking. The Monk’s eyes follow him warily, and Gawain feels that twist of guilt again, but if he can spare the humiliation of revealing his fault in front of the boy he will. Let him continue his hero-worship a little longer, before he learns that idols are always flawed.

Squirrel perks up at the address, and thrusts his shoulders back and head high as he makes a report. “Lancelot is still injured, Green Knight, but Pym said he’d get better if he ate so I’ve been giving him some of my afternoon snack.” He turns a critical eye on the Monk, whose wary watchfulness is hidden under the boy’s gaze and replaced with a raised eyebrow. “I think he probably shouldn’t fight until he’s rested a bit.”

Gawain hides his smile with difficulty, but catches even Kaze regarding with indulgent fondness Squirrel’s pronouncement. “Thank you, Ser Percival, for your wisdom.” He preens like a proud dove under the praise. “I am sure our guest appreciates it, and your generosity. Now, I am afraid I have something to discuss with him. You’re relieved of duty – would you escort Ser Kaze back to the covert for the evening meal?”

He doesn’t want an audience for whatever happens next, and Kaze lets him know she’s seen through him with a devastating raised brow as Squirrel ‘escorts’ her out of the tent, having been refused his offer to return the red cross dagger to its owner, much to Gawain’s relief. Gawain listens to their footsteps move away until there is naught but the soft sounds of the covert in the distance and the first calls of the nocturnal woodland creatures.

“He will be a fine warrior, one day.” The Monk’s low murmur draws his gaze back like a tide, and there’s still that softness to it when he speaks of Squirrel but the wary walls are starting to rise once more.

Gawain feels unmoored by the man’s obvious care for the boy. He is beginning to think of Squirrel as more than a squire, something akin to a son. To have this man – his captive, his _enemy_ , express the same fondness… perhaps he ought to be gratified that even one such as the Weeping Monk recognises Squirrel’s good heart, but he can only feel unnerved, fearful for the boy being around him.

He has to cover his discomfort. Allowing his stance to shift into that of the warrior, he clears all expression from his face. 

“Strip.”

This time, the Monk’s gaze is wide and apprehensive, and Gawain feels a sick pleasure in his belly at having thrown him into such confusion.

“You have been hiding your injuries, but that ends now. I had thought to let you die from your wounds if that was what you truly wished, but Squirrel’s sharp eyes have found you out, and I will not cause him more pain by having you bleed to death before him.”

Having spoken, he rises to his knees and presses forward, taking the collar of the Monk’s cloak and unfastening it, throwing the fabric aside. The Monk tries to shift away, breath coming a little harder, but Gawain is relentless and matter-of-fact, and with a shudder and swallow the man ceases his resistance and submits. 

The leather cuirass comes off easily once Gawain’s fingers find the buckles tucked down the side beneath the Monk’s arms, and the ties of the gambeson unlace with similar ease. The fabric gets caught over his bound hands, and Gawain contemplates it for a moment before casting the tangle from his mind and continuing. 

When the Monk is down to a thin black shirt, already ripped over the shoulder, Gawain notices he’s shaking. Some of that glassiness from before has returned, but the gaze the Ash Man sends him is still lucid, still defiant, and so he does not fight the impulse which makes him tear the already ruined fabric apart.

The Weeping Monk's body is a desecrated temple. 

Bruises cover the man like a kingly garment; purple and yellow and forest green crawl up his chest and collar, and Gawain can see the tell-tale star pattern of a spiked mace under his sternum. The flesh is mottled red and furious up the side he protects instinctively; broken ribs hidden beneath the skin. Even in the cool air, sweat gathers in the hollows of the man’s body and along his brow.

With such a vibrant canvas of injury to distract him, its some moments before Gawain notices the scar. 

It curls over the Monk’s shoulder, thick and translucent; old. Gawain frowns, pushes the shirt further down – the Monk tenses as he moves out of direct eyeline, but makes no move to turn his head. Perhaps resigned to Gawain’s inspection.

His back is a tapestry. White lesions long healed run like a spiderweb across his shoulderblades, the long elegant line of his back, and are overlaid with crimson. The marks are those of a whip, or a flogger; he is decorated like the forest floor, scarlet sap still seeping from branched wounds.

Gawain’s voice shakes, but naming the emotion eludes him. “Who.”

The Monk’s reply is a winter wind. “Myself.”

Sickness rises within Gawain, but he cannot tell if it is for the man before him or himself. “Why?”

“Cleansing.” Comes the eventual answer. 

A bitten off whimper – Gawain looks down and sees his hand pressed against the cross spanning the Monk’s shoulderblade as if in a dream. Life beats beneath his fingertips, the pulse of heartblood calling to his own, and there is an answering cry within his chest. He runs a shaking hand down the line of the Monk’s spine, and the fair skin arches beneath his touch.

It’s horrible. It’s beautiful.

The bandage cloths lie discarded on the floor, Pym’s optimism; he takes them up, cuts long swathes with his belt knife. The Monk watches warily.

To tie the bindings, he wraps his arms around the man in a mockery of tender embrace. It brings their faces close, and their gazes catch; the Monk’s eyes are the sea wracked by storms, a tempest above the fathomless deep. What does the Ash Man see in turn within Gawain?

“You should not waste the cloth.” The Monk murmurs, and this close Gawain can almost taste the blood on his breath. Not a lung puncture, or else he’d already be choking on it, but something torn inside. He ignores the protest, but the man insists once more. “I do not deserve-“

“You’re damn right you don’t deserve this.” Gawain growls. “But you’ll take it anyway.”

The Monk makes a pained noise, but for some reason Gawain gets the sense it isn’t caused by something physical. “I have no worth. A broken sword has no use save to be melted down. I may as well be dead already – will you not give me leave?” His voice is cracked as his words, and through his anger Gawain feels the first tendrils of sorrow. 

How lonely, to believe that fighting is all one is good for. How sick, how sorrowful to believe pain and death are one’s only lot in life.

He’s softer this time, when he replies, the way he might have spoken to Squirrel. “Pain is a sign you yet live. And life is a gift, one not to be wasted.”

“You understand nothing.”

“I understand enough. I died at the hands of the Red Brothers.” Gawain feels the words bubble out of him like a brook – this is a story longing to be told. “I drifted for a while in the green, and it was quiet. I was at peace. But the Hidden came to me and brought me from that place where everything is the colour of first summer sunlight through the canopy, and spat me back out into a world full of blood and ash and iron.”

The Monk is silent for a while, and Gawain lets the peace sit while he wrapps his arms around the man, again and again, passing the bandage from hand to hand in the rocking echo of an embrace. “Do you not resent being resurrected, if your death was so?”

“Sometimes.” It’s honest, more honest than he’d intended. “But I know I have tasks left unfulfilled. A people who need direction, and a boy who needs a mentor.”

The Monk opens his mouth to respond, and Gawain hears the words before the man speaks them. _Nobody needs me_. He cannot bear to look such despair in the face, nor has he an answer for it, and so switches to be pressed up behind the Monk instead, under guise of tying off the bandages. It presses the Monk’s bound hands up against Gawain’s belt, tangled in the fabric of his clothing, and leaves the brands upon his shoulders in full view.

He brushes a hand across the wicked cuts once more, feels again the arch of the Monk’s back with that same strange sickness in his stomach. “Isn’t this a kind of healing too?”

The answering shudder causes the man’s fingers to brush against his lower half again, and he realises with horror his body is taking more than brotherly interest in the touch. His eyes dart down, pulling back, only to catch the flicker of his belt knife disappearing into the mess of cloth around the Monk’s hands.

He is still, for a moment. There is distant roaring in his ears.

“You-“ He chokes.

All those soft words. The confessions he has made, things told to no-one else. Foolish. He knows the man is a snake, an enemy – and his vulnerability has been repaid with venom, as is only in a serpent’s nature. 

The anger rising makes his limbs tense and tremor-riven, when he shoves the Monk forward there is no gentleness in him at all. The man sprawls on his belly, gasping, and Gawain recalls the broken ribs. _Good._ He thinks savagely, _let him scream for all I care_.

He is rough with his search, his hands thorough and relentless in their pursuit of the errant knife, and his weight atop the man grinds the Monk into the dirt. Once removed from its place secreted away under the bandages in the hollow at the base of the spine, he brandishes the knife in the man’s face and relishes the way those charcoal-shadowed eyes widen, how he shies away from the iron in Gawain's hand. 

“I should have known. All that talk about brokenness and corpses – did you think I would feel pity for you, and loose your hands to allow your slaughter of the camp?” That the Monk very nearly succeeded in such a goal is left unsaid.

He takes the blade to the remnants of the man’s clothes – the shirt comes away easily, the gambeson ripping with only a little more effort. It’s not enough though; the fire still blazes within him, and so he strips the boots and breeches from the Monk as well until he lies shivering and panting in his braies and bandages.

Escape would be hard to come by now, he thinks with bitter satisfaction, the roaring beast in his chest sated by the display, and he crowns the achievement by hauling the Monk upright and strapping him firmly to the tent post. 

The man’s eyes are closed and teeth grit against uneven breaths. Gawain cannot bear to look upon him any longer.

He storms from the tent, only ceasing in his march when he is back in the war room. The lists of supplies taunt him, but he hasn’t the patience for logistics now, and instead takes up a sword from those hung on the wall and shadow-fences until his heartbeat slows and he feels more like himself.

The footwork is calming, and he twists and whirls with abandon – he should teach Squirrel the steps of this dance as soon as they have a moment. Time stretches, and he’s so lost in the trancelike meditation of it that when he senses another presence nearby he reacts by instinct and it’s only Kaze’s swift counter with a dagger that saves her from losing an arm.

They are caught motionless for a second, before the woman narrows her eyes. “Green Knight. Who guards our guest, if you are here swatting at flies?”

It takes him a moment to recall of what she speaks. Then it returns to him. The Monk. The knife. 

He scowls, but as he opens his mouth to reply he catches a strange scent on the air and freezes instead.

Smoke.

Kaze seems to smell it at the same time; their wide eyes meet for a moment before they’re both rushing for the doorway – the passage outside confirms his first sense. Something is burning.

The whispers follow them as they pass through the camp at pace, and he recalls with horror the warning Pym had given him only earlier that day about malcontents.

The entrance to the covert is thronged – he and Kaze push through only to be met with the sight that has drawn such a crowd. Night has fallen on the forest while he made his foolish overtures at swordplay in the war room, but the trees surrounding the covert are anything but shadowed – lit instead by the glow of embers.

The Monk’s tent is ablaze, silhouetted against the dark. 

Gawain makes to fall forward, but Kaze holds him back and she’s right. 

He can already see the conflagration has caught the sides of the canvas, the thick fabric riddled with holes leaking black smoke. The fire has been going some time. There's a horrified yell next to him and he glances over to see Kaze's other arm holding a sobbing Squirrel to her chest.

Gawain's knees hit the grass, and the horror and guilt threaten to overwhelm him. 

He’d tied the Monk to his pyre and left him to burn.

-

There’s blood in his mouth. Again.

He aches, inside and out, bones and muscles and sinew, wrists and ankles and hips, the joints of spinal cord between his shoulders and skull. Even his skin feels over-heated, sensitive and raw where the Green Knight had laid hands on him. The first touches had been… not unpleasant. Grounding. When the rough sword calluses had pressed into the marks of the whip, the flash of agony had felt like the kiss of leather and the cool relief of water both.

The knife had been a mistake. A reflex action, palming the weapon to cope with the terrifying shivers of pain-relief the Knight bestowed, and the morass of uncertainty into which his reactions threw him. He had been afraid.

He feels the fear again now.

The smoke is beginning to thicken – he’s already begun coughing. The arsonist hadn’t even sought a peek of their prey, though Lancelot saw their shadow pass alongside the outside of the tent, illuminated by the burning torch they bore. 

He’d guessed their intent, and the knowledge had come as a relief. He isn’t certain that the inferno will kill him; the dry woven matt had caught almost at once, yet the flames are as harmless as ever. He’s never been trapped in a burning building before though, and either smoke inhalation or the cough finally driving a rib right through his lungs ought to succeed where his nature dictates the fire will not.

It’s poetic, he thinks, leaning back against the tent pole to which he is bound, flexing his wrists against the loss of blood flow but not struggling. He has put so many to the flames, keeping the traitorous secrets which would have protected him in their places. Perhaps this is justice, come to collect.

The smoke stings his eyes, and he tastes salt. He’s crying. Why is he crying? Is this not everything he wished for?

_Pain is a sign you yet live. And life is a gift, not to be wasted._

“Perhaps… you are right.” He whispers to the Green Knight in his mind, the words drawing another round of coughing. _But it is too late for revelations now._


	4. Chapter 4

The Boy is fourteen years old, and the words of Father Carden are harsh, but fair. 

They are the laws by which Boy lives, his guiding star, a promised land to reach and strive for, and they pave the road to salvation with their rules and strictures. Boy is more grateful than he can speak for them, and for the cool hands that never touch him but draw the sign of the cross over his forehead when sweat and blood crown his brow like Christ's thorns. He is grateful too for those flint-sharp eyes, that see him in his entirety and are left not horrified by his wickedness but compassionate, moved to help him rather than let him drown and die.

 _This is all I can offer you._ The Father says, over and over. _I cannot walk this road on your behalf. The trials of the future will be yours to endure and not mine, and one day, perhaps even soon, there may come a time when you must do this alone._

 _I never wish to do this without you._ He begs. _I cannot_.

_You can. You will._ The Father says, and his voice is a cornerstone one could build cities upon; the certainty not of an oak, which can be felled, but a mountain. 

But the Father is not always with him, and Boy is weak. 

He is terribly, terribly weak to the earthly comforts of the flesh – the soft beds of inns, when he is sent away on missions, the ground too hard for his back and leaving him aching. He is weak to salt and roasted meat, and golden potatoes glistening in oil, and fruits ripe from the tree that burst with sweetness upon his tongue. He is weak to soft cloth, to wool and linen and the supple leather of good boots. 

The weaknesses dwell in him, take root and rot him from the inside out, so the Father says, and so they are taken from him, one by one as it is proven over and over he is too wicked to resist their corruption. His soft, faun leather boots are replaced with the broken things the quartermaster had replaced a year or two previous – hole-ridden and damp every time it rains. His socks are soaked through and icy cold, but when he mentions it offhand to a Brother at the fireside it is passed on to the Father and so they too are taken from him until there is no defence for his feet against the mud and gravel. His soles blister and bleed, heels cracking in the heat and skin frayed in the rain. 

And his body becomes stronger. 

The cloth they cannot take from him entirely, for he needs to go about clothed for propriety’s sake, and a hair shirt is the blessing chosen instead. Lying next to his skin, the coarse bristles cause an endless itching, a prickling across his body so pervasive he feels he will go mad with it. It irritates the still healing stripes of his latest penance, until they are raw and infected and have to be sluiced with spirits, more painful even than the whip itself. 

But his will becomes stronger. 

The fruit, the potatoes and the meat are hard to set aside, for he has the body of a young man and the duties of a soldier meaning satiation is nigh impossible. Thus the decision is taken out of his hands by the benevolent Father. Fasts are called for the whole camp, so that he cannot speak his hunger without seeming undevoted to the cause, and when the restrictions are lifted for the others but left in place for him he is too exhausted to question. 

The Father confers with Brother Salt, who is becoming an expert in such things, and Boy is permitted only water and broth for two weeks whilst remaining active in his duty. It lasts until one morning when unconsciousness crashes upon him the moment he pulls into the saddle, and awakens to the hard wood of a pallet bed, a broken shield-arm and the disappointment of the Father. 

He becomes stronger. 

\- 

The horns announce the return of Arthur long before Gawain sees the man. 

The fey warriors are the last of those to return from the ill-fated sally forth to Uther’s ships. Reports from the refugees who’d travelled ahead of the warriors report those vessels had vanished with the morning tide like so much sea foam, Uther’s promises worth all that could be expected without the Wolf-Blood Witch in his grasp. 

It remained to be seen what news the fey fighting force would bring, and what manner of person this unlikely ally Red Spear would be. Gawain had yet to face any of the Norse folk in battle, but if they were as fierce, battlehardy and bloodthirsty as rumour said, she might prove a powerful ally. 

He is unfamiliar with the circumstance that had Arthur to join forces with the pirate, but thanks the Hidden for it; without that alliance he would have naught but a handful of kin left, and fewer fighters with which to protect them. 

The warriors that begin to trickle into the camp like a silt-clogged stream show signs of hard use, wounds staunched but untreated and festering; several have the stench of the infected as they pass Gawain where he stands at the gate, clasping hands and thanking every soldier for their service. 

The Red Spear’s people are easy to identify, with their strange clothing and unfamiliar weapons, but they seem just as beaten down, and Gawain runs figures in his head almost unthinkingly, calculating the extra water, the hunting, the poultices needed to tend to these as well. The numbers make his head spin. 

Pulling up the rear walk the two commanders, weary as an old year and looking just as haggard. Arthur musters a smile when he sees Gawain standing stalwart, but it is strained, and he leans upon a staff to take the weight from his right foot. The Red Spear bears no injuries visible to Gawain’s eye, but she has the cracked lips and hollow cheeks of one worn down by too long without enough fresh water or nourishment. It is not like the Ice People to go hungry on purpose – Gawain wonders if she had given her share to those whose injuries are more severe. 

When finally they are eye to eye, Arthur puts a hand on Gawain’s shoulder. He returns the grasp with fervour, feeling the uncharacteristic weight with which the other man leans upon him. 

“My friend, I would present to you our rescuer, and the architect of our victory against Cumber’s forces; the Red Spear herself.” Gawain bows and holds out his hand to the woman. Her grip is shockingly strong, sure and steady. 

“We are in your debt.” He acknowledges. “We have little here, but if there is anything you need from the fey then I offer it freely.” 

She grimaces. “How ‘bout a drink to start?” 

Gawain’s laughter is a shock to them all, but after a moment Arthur joins him in mirth; they are all of them too relieved to do any different.

When night falls, the camp is full; for the first time every campfire is thronged as the warriors are welcomed home by grieving, grateful family members, newly forged battle bonds sealed over mugs of cauldron ale and hedge wine. Everywhere there are back claps and embraces, and those who have managed to keep their instruments bring them out and set to playing a merry tune. There is dancing, everyone caught up in the joy and relief of survival, pushing the difficult choices of the future to tomorrow. 

Gawain slips away as early as he can. 

The firelight sickens him, and he has no stomach for high spirits. As he leaves, he catches Arthur and Red Spear stood together in an alcove a little way from the rest. Their voices are raised in argument and Red Spear is gesturing with a tankard half-full and listing dangerously, but their shoulders are relaxed and Arthur’s eyes speak amusement, not anger, so Gawain leaves them to it. Much joy may they have of whatever it may be, he thinks wearily, for it sounds as though they may each be exactly as mercenary as the other needs. 

He puts no thought into his direction, but knows there was never really doubt to where he would be led. The healing caves are the only place as busy as the firesides tonight, and as he ducks through the entrance he meets the only other voluntary inhabitant. 

Yeva’s eyes may be clouded but she sees in the low light far better than Gawain, and his nod to her is met with a disdainful toss of her great tangled mane. As she passes him in the too-small corridor he gets the scent of her; medicinal herbs, feathers and damp earth. It should be distasteful, but instead he finds it soothing – many were the hours he spent in healing caves as a reckless boy and an even more reckless young man, battered by some fighting or other or merely his own foolishness. The scent of medicine and earth is a balm to his soul, and a strange reminder of that glorious green place he had visited before the Hidden brought him back to life. 

Those warriors who were capable have made their way out to the fires; the only inhabitants of the caves at this moment are the truly sick or dying. His feet carry him forward near against his will, through to the innermost caves until he stands at the bedside where his thoughts have dwelt all evening, all day, and all the preceding night. 

The Monk is deathly pale under the moonlight. 

He lies prone, straight as a coffin-bound corpse, the blanket a formality that serves primarily to cover the injuries the whole camp assumes are there. He still stinks of smoke, hair to brows to eyelashes coated, and the oily black sheen the ash had given his skin had concealed the extent of his eerie wholeness from the watchful eyes of the covert, when Gawain pulled him from the embers in the early hours of the morning. 

The hale flesh beneath his hands had been a miracle, beyond belief, and he’d hoarded to himself the task of cleaning soot from the blessedly uncharred skin. The river water had exposed the revelation underneath, and he’d been struck by the urge to press his mouth to the man’s arms, his stomach, his jaw, to taste the truth of his survival. 

Only four know the secret revealed by the flames – Gawain, Yeva, Kaze, and Squirrel. 

The boy is even now curled in a ball next to the motionless form, squeezed onto the edge of a pallet far too small for two. He had refused to come out to welcome the fey home from the beaches, refused to attend dinner. When Gawain brought him food, he ate, but listlessly, and even now his face is set in a scowl, fingers twitching around an imaginary bow as he fights off the monsters in his dreams. 

Gawain had apologised to Yeva most profusely for the boy’s intrusion, but she had only looked at him with that inscrutable glare and pronounced that removal would do more harm than good to both patient and visitor. 

There have been no more whispers in the covert, no more attempts on the Monk’s life since the conflagration the previous evening. Whomever set the fire, they must have assumed their work was done, or decided the Ash Man had paid enough for his crimes. 

Regardless, Gawain feels anxious every moment the Monk is not within his sight. He pulls up the chair, still crooked from last time he was here a few hours ago, and buries his face in his hands. 

All his fears seem like folly now. 

He had been so convinced, so determined that the Monk was a force for evil in the fey camp, so determined to see the wrong in everything he did or said. Yet what had the Ash Man really done since his arrival that was worthy of such suspicion? He had stolen the knife, yes, but Gawain would not wish to go weaponless in the camp of the Red Paladins, had he a choice, much less if he was to be very literally under his enemy’s hands. As the Monk had been under his. 

Is there anything that can justify leaving a man helpless and without defense in the camp of those who hate him? Condemning him to whatever punishment those with vendettas and vengeance on their minds can dream up? 

In the pit of his belly too, there is the seed of a guilt that he shies away from even giving a name. It was more than anger which had caused him to flee the tent when he had discovered the theft of the knife, he is strong enough to admit it to himself. 

Embarrassment, too, had played its part, the knowledge that the feel of the Monk’s flesh under his fingers had made his body react, brought him to hardness. Lust is a seed not easily uprooted, a fire not easily doused, and he can already sense the tendrils of new flame working away in his gut despite the embers and ash to which he’d stamped those feelings. 

This is no pure thing, no bright sunshine or cool clear stream to wash away the darkness of the world in which the Monk and he live. There can be no right redemption from this, not when the roots of anger and lust are so entwined within his mind and body, when even now as he looks upon the moon-drenched skin and the hint of spiderweb scars over the man’s shoulder he wishes to do as he did before. To press his fingers into those wounds, to feel him arch again under Gawain’s hands. 

To have him yield, and yet not too easily, so Gawain can know him truly mastered. 

He feels the panic rising again, and throws himself from the chair. It clatters against the stone floor and he winces at the noise, but Squirrel only snuffles a little and slumbers on. 

There ought to be a worn track across the slabs of rock, with all the pacing he has already done in this room. The panic kept him awake throughout the night and into morning, and the guilt has done the same work since. Every time his eyes fall closed he sees again the flames painted on the inside of his eyelids, smells the burning canvas. His eyes sting and it is as if the acrid smoke is in his lungs again and he cannot breathe. 

The Monk’s survival is a miracle, a blessing from the Hidden. This is what Gawain tells himself, despite Yeva’s murmurs of Ash Folk gifts long forgotten and much maligned. Had the Monk been anything other than what he is, his death would have been assured, and the quirk which allowed his return from the grave is no excuse for the actions which sent him there. 

Squirrel had screamed himself hoarse, cried himself to sleep, and when Gawain had confessed his part in leaving the Monk unguarded out of temper the boy had refused to look at him. The rejection is a pain of its own kind unlike the rest, taking residence in a different part of Gawain’s already beaten and bloody heart. He doesn’t begrudge Squirrel the punishment. If he was able, he would refuse to look at himself as well.

The healing slumber Yeva has placed the Monk into for the smoke and the cracked ribs is a messy, difficult piece of magic, and Gawain had ridden all morning out into the forest hunting down the rare herbs and components himself; he has given of his own life force to power the spell.

All his vitality is a gift from the Hidden, and he hopes they’ll not begrudge him passing on that power to another of those visited with their favour.

He feels the twinge over his heart again where Yeva had ripped apart his skin with her claws and taken his blood – the wound already magic-scarred but always to ache from now on, until the fragment of his own life within the Monk was released by death. 

“It still pains you.” He startles, so caught up had he been in his ruminations that the witch’s approach had gone unnoticed. 

“Yes.” He confesses, and she nods, satisfied. “When will he wake?” 

Yeva raises a grey and crooked brow. “That is up to him. His body is weak, but no longer at death's door. His flesh heals… but I sense his mind does not.” She bends to scratch some dried blood from the wound to the Monk’s face, brings it to her mouth on one talon. Gawain grimaces as she tastes it, disgust warring with something uncomfortably like sick envy. 

“What do you mean?” He forces out, to keep his mind off such things. 

“Wounds of the body are rarely enough to keep a man dormant for long. Wounds of the mind go much deeper, and scar more readily.” 

“Is there anything I can do?” 

There is too much revealed in his voice, this he knows as he knows the feel of the sword in his hand and the taste of blood. Yeva looks upon him and he feels her gaze like a scourge. 

“Tell me, boy.” She is the only one who calls him that. The only one who remembers the foolish child that came before the warrior. “Why try you so hard to save him?” 

How can he answer? He knows not how he would even begin, wishes he could return the insight to her instead, beg her to tell him why he feels as he does, why his body and mind are so consumed, why the guilt turns to ash in his mouth, why lust and anger tangle in his guts until he is sick with it. 

“I don’t know.” He whispers. 

It does not satisfy – Yeva’s frown is deep and disapproving, and she clucks her tongue as she turns away. “I need more ingredients.” 

“More?” Her stocks of poultice herbs are bursting, though he knows they will not last – it is freshness and not quantity which will determine who is saved among the returned fey warriors now. 

“For your captive.” Unlike the others, Yeva does not use the pretty lie of ‘guest’ for the Monk – it is a strange relief. 

“Yes, what- what do you need?” He’s stumbling over his words again like a child, like Squirrel when passion or excitement moves him. 

Her list is short, but baffling – all things the surrounding forest could contain, but which will take many hours to find; marten tongue, false morels, flowering borage. 

He agrees, because what else can he do, but her parting words give him more pause than the herbs. “You must think again, boy. Why do you want to save him? Come to me tomorrow night with a better answer, and I will show you what to do.” 

\- 

The air is cool and damp, vibrant with insect life, their hum the song of a choir with ten thousand voices. The jewelled carapace of a beetle crawls through his peripheral vision and he turns to watch its iridescence disappear beneath a leaf glistening with dew like a thousand fragments of fallen stars. The world is green, and glowing. All around him, the smell of the earth rises like sacred incense towards the bright canopy, clean and clear and delicious as it fills his lungs with the fragrance of moss and pine. He opens his mouth as if he could capture the taste and to his delight, he can, a blossoming of flowers across his tongue, gentle and sweet spring rain. 

_Where am I?_ Lancelot cannot recall a time when he had felt so peaceful. Recalling anything beyond the green, in fact, is difficult. Had he once been somewhere else? Had his head rested on other things than the soft earth, his skin been kissed by aught but warm, pleasant sunlight? 

There are whispers at the edge of hearing like the caress of a waterfall, not beneath or behind the cacophony of life but a part of it. He focuses upon them, straining, and the voices become louder, more distinct until he can distil individual words. 

_Ash child… Lancelot… come…_

**To conjure demons is a mortal sin.** The Father’s voice is thunder, the sonorous clap of the sky splitting open, and all at once the peace of the green place is replaced with pain. **Ye must cleanse yourself of their words, for they speak only poison and corruption. God sees all.**

_No, please._ He begs. 

**For what do you seek, Boy? Forgiveness or relief from pain?**

He is on his stomach, and his mouth is full of dirt and ash. His eyes are crusted closed, and when they open it is to the sight of embers at his fingertips, the roots of the nearest tree beginning to burn, the forest going up in flames. 

_I was the one._ The realisation is the sting of salt in a wound, in his eyes. _In all my dreams. I was the one who set the fire and destroyed the wood._

The whispers are still there; he can sense them just beneath the Father’s voice, but he cannot make them out. Whatever sanctuary the green place offered is broken, leaving only earthquake tremors and the lightning strikes of the whip on his unprotected spine. 

The Father was right. Even heaven, it seems, is denied to him. 

\- 

“The fey will die if we do not move! We are like hares caught in a trap - Are we to just accept our extinction?” Gawain’s fist slams the war table, the carven figures representing their myriad enemies and precious few allies toppling out of place on the map with an echoing clatter. There is a beat of silence, and Gawain raises his hand, trembling with exhaustion, and runs it over his face as if he could wipe away the outburst. “I apologise. My temper is… frayed.” 

“You have nothing to apologise for.” Arthur said, taking his shoulder with a firm, friendly grip. “You have done all that could be asked of a commander in such times; kept your people safe, fed, and watered, and now put those resources to the use of your allies. Your passion is understandably heightened by the war.” 

Gawain meets Kaze’s eyes across the table, but she gives him nothing but a raised brow. She knows better than anyone else at this table the reason for his short temper, his ‘passion’, yet she remains as implacable. 

He sighs, “Very well. What are we to do?” 

Red Spear has been loitering at the edge of the conversation, picking fragments of scum and blood from under her nails with a wicked looking knife, but now she raises her head. “You need boats?” 

“Yes.” Gawain rubs at his eyes, cursing bitterly the headache he can feel brewing. “Uther, Widow take his lying hide, promised his fleet to us, but when Nimue fled capture they disappeared on the new tide. I cannot blame her actions, I did not wish her go to in the first place-” 

“Yet a part of you regrets the loss, though it has saved one you love.” From an unexpected quarter, Kaze’s voice is a knife off cutting Gawain’s ruminations. There is a moment as her words hang heavy over the table like a low fog. 

“You need safe passage from the mainland… and I need a force to help me battle Cumber.” Red Spear breaks the silence with her musing. “Perhaps… we can help each other.” 

“Our forces you have already seen.” Arthur says, turning to her with raised brows and wide eyes. “We don’t have anything like the army you’d need to meet him in the field.” 

“Ah, but I won’t be meeting him in the field.” Her smile is crooked, and promises blood. “Ambushes and stealth missions are where the most damage may be done with fewest losses, and from what you tell me the both of our forces are more suited to skirmishes than open battle.” 

“It is a pity then you cannot take lessons from our hooded friend, the Weeping Monk.” Arthur replies ruefully, heedless of the sudden stiffening of Gawain’s shoulders, the sharp edge to Kaze’s glare. “He certainly knew how to plant the kind of traps even the best fall into unawares.” 

Gawain cannot help agreeing – the Weeping Monk as an enemy was formidable and terrifying, but as an ally… there was so much more he could have been. Gawain had meant what he’d said, bound and bloodied in the Red Paladin’s torture chamber and thinking the Ash Man might be one of his last sights before committing his soul to the green – as an ally, the Weeping Monk could be the fey’s greatest warrior. Could have been greater even than the Green Knight. 

And now, because of Gawain’s temper and indiscretion, he lies like a dead man waiting to be buried. 

“Life is a gift, not to be wasted.” He murmurs, and it is only when he hears the cough that he realises his eyes have slipped closed. The other occupants of the table are watching him, and he shakes his head. “We must take whatever steps necessary to protect those yet living. Lady Red Spear-“ She raises an expectant brow at him. “If you will help the fey escape these lands, I will do everything in my power to help you take from Cumber what you desire.” 

“Aye, you have our word.” Arthur echoes, and Kaze nods agreement, her acquiescence mimicked by the other fey elders gathered, stirred by Gawain’s pronouncement. 

He thrusts out a hand, and Red Spear takes it, once again her strength almost shocking as she grips his hand like she can wield him as an axe. An analogy not far off the relationship they are sealing, he muses. Mustering what little energy he has left, he cries loud enough that those gathered outside the chamber will be able to hear; “Born in the dawn!” 

“To pass in the Twilight!” Comes the answering roar, and if the grins around the table are half teeth gritted and half bared and bloodthirsty, well. They have their chance. 

He leaves Arthur and Red Spear discussing ambush tactics, and heads to the healing caves – he has an answer for Yeva. 

She’s waiting like she knew he’d come, stood by the bed of the Monk and already chanting. He adds the ingredients he spent all last night obtaining from the forest, and watches. 

Squirrel is gone; Gawain knows not where – and the blanket that had covered the man from toe to neck has vanished also. 

The Monk is sky clad, both figuratively and literally; the moon bathes him and colours his skin the blue of distant mountains, every contour and crevice shadowed. Sleep has softened his face and he looks young - _so young_ \- and vulnerable, the weeping Ash-marks like sorrow carved into his skin. 

He is beautiful. 

Yeva is painting him. 

The spirals and lines are familiar to Gawain gut-deep, though he cannot read anything from them – ancient fey-sign, like the kind used in the trees to guide the People home. He recognises the sigil for Sky Folk, a triangle with a line struck through parallel to the base, and another sigil always alongside, a triangle emptied. 

“So, Green Knight, are you ready now?" He settles his breath, and nods. "Why try so hard to save him?” 

_Because life is a gift, and nobody ever taught him that. Because he deserves to be saved, because everyone does. Because he reminds me of me, of how I might have been if things had been different. Because all fey are brothers. Because we need him. Because Squirrel loves him already. Because I want him._

“Because I cannot do otherwise.” 

Yeva’s gaze reveals nothing. But when she turns back to her concoction, her scratchy old voice begins to speak. 

“The boy is very near death. He would have been taken already, had you not pulled him from the embers before they cooled. Had he not been of the Ash Folk, he would have burned, as so many of his victims. All this, you know.” Gawain nods, heart-heavy. 

“The sleep I have placed him into is precarious. It keeps one from death, but only by the will of the magician, and the spark of life willingly given – by you, Green Knight. He walks the knife edge between life and death, only kept from the brink by your connection. And only you can bring him back.” 

“Bring him back?” Gawain is breathless, like the smoke has taken his lungs once more. “How?” 

“He is dreaming.” Yeva traced a taloned claw across the Monk’s forehead, leaving a trail of paint in her wake. “Connected to the Hidden, in the Green. Using your connection, I can put you into the same sleep, and the Hidden will help you find him. Once there, you must persuade him to follow you out.” 

“Right.” Falling asleep will certainly be no problem, the floor already swims under him, but he has a feeling that such a simple-sounding task will not be so. Magic never is. “Follow me out.” 

Yeva’s eyes are cold and sharp as whetstones. Merciless. “I warn you, Green Knight, to do this you will pay a heavy price. All magic has cost. If he chooses death rather than following you out of the dreaming, then you risk being dragged into the Widow’s arms with him. And if after all your urging he still wishes not to return… you must allow him the death he desires. Lest the Widow chase you down and seek a soul to replace that stolen.” 

Gawain swallows. There are blades in his throat, but he has come this far. “I understand.” 

The ritual is short. At Yeva’s direction, he strips himself of clothing and lies as naked as the monk upon the stone floor next to the pallet bed. He has enough mind to spare a thought to embarrassment, but it withers in the face of Yeva’s cold disinterest – he’s not sure she even notices. The ground is chilled beneath his back, but laid like this he is bathed in the same moonlight as the Monk, and it calms him somehow to be reminded of their alignment. 

Kneeling next to him so that her great feathered wings brush against his ribcage, Yeva begins painting the same dark sigils onto Gawain’s own chest, the spirals, swooping lines, the Sky Folk sigil and the other one. “Is that for the Ash Folk?” He asks, wondering. “I’ve never seen it used so. I… assumed they were all dead. Apart from him.” 

Yeva pauses almost infinitesimally, and when she does there is a catch, a croak deeper than her usual scratch. “Not all. But the last of them are now beyond your reach. Or his.” 

The paint is slick and warm, black in the moonlight but smelling of blood, and Gawain wonders which animal one sacrifices for a melded dreaming. As the tapestry of sigils takes shape he feels the press of magic and bodily need for sleep begin to drag him down. Yeva is chanting under her breath, and he struggles to keep his eyes open. 

This could be the end, he realises. If the spell goes wrong... if the Monk refuses Gawain's help, as is very likely. He ought to feel fear, but instead a kind of peace settles upon him. _Perhaps this is the task for which the Hidden brought me back._ He had thought it was to lead his people, but they have Arthur and Red Spear, and Squirrel, and Pym, and Nimue if she could ever be found... and the Monk, if Gawain can retrieve him. 

They will be safe. Life is a price he is more than willing to pay for such a treasure. 

“Born in the dawn.” Yeva whispers to him, mouth so close he can smell the carrion. 

With the very last of his strength, before the magic takes him under, he murmurs back what he always knew would be his last words. 

“To pass in the Twilight.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there wasn't a lot of Lancelot this chapter - I promise there's LOTS up next time.  
> Yeva and Flemeth should get together and bitch about petty mortals.  
> Thanks for all your lovely comments! <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chap could possibly have been better split in two but I wasn't sure where to divide it. In my head I imagine the Green to be kind of a cross between the Fade from Dragon Age and the Emerald Dream from WoW, but you don't need to have played either to get it.
> 
> Please check the updated tags!

Gawain opens his eyes to a forest aflame.

He feels the heat like a furnace, akin to huddling too close to a bakery oven in winter, the pleasant warmth becoming a sear that could strip the flesh from his bones.

He is laid in a clearing, under the moon. The hole in the canopy above is an exact circle, eerie and unnatural in its perfection. All around him press the trees, trunks thick but branches sagging and bare, the burned foliage leaving gaps large enough that a grown man could pass between if he ducked his head.

He feels strange, dazed and dreamy, yet observing everything in intense detail; he watches a dry leaf catch light and shrivel into dust, feels the brush of grass against his palms. Blinking away the dream and the fragments of ash which drift like snow in the air, he pushes himself onto his elbows and glances around.

At once, there is a great groaning creak like a dying creature, and a branch falls from the nearest tree and crashes to the forest floor, sending sparks skittering across the underbrush like eager little insects. He scrambles back, raising a hand instinctively to protect his face, and then stretches the limb out before his eyes in astonishment.

He is wearing the armour of the Green Knight, but changed - This bracer is not black but the colour of the ivy which grows close to the trunk; dark and subtle. The leather is hardened and study, but brilliant green, dyed with nettle and chamomile – yet he knows at its crafting it was black as pitch. The set is complete; the cuirass with its pebbling like river stones or snakeskin, but with carvings of leaves and flowers beneath every fold of leather, the greaves replete with leaping stags, the pauldron shining as he hadn’t seen it since new, engraved with sigils in old feysign. His sword is heavy and edged with gilt, the nick in the blade healed, vines trailing down the fuller.

Even the helm he wears – it had gone unnoticed in his initial wakening, but he touches the band and there it is; he is antler-crowned once more, king of the forest. His armour had been a treasured possession, a second skin and a saviour in his many battles for the fey, but this – this marks him as the Green Knight in more than name, as beyond a champion, as an icon. Something other than a Sky Man good with a sword; this is the armour of a legend.

He even _feels_ different, lighter and stronger than a young sapling, stronger than he’s felt in months; strong enough, perhaps, to carry the weight that the Green Knight lays upon his shoulders.

In life, the burden of the name had nearly broken him, buckling beneath the heavy mantle of leadership. But slipping from the pedestal the fey had placed him on was not an option so long as they needed him, and even now he is determined - by the grace of the Hidden he will continue to serve until his true death comes.

He recalls with sickening ease this armour being stripped from him, taken by the Red Paladins upon capture, and watching it thrown onto the pyre whilst they laughed. He’d mourned it like a second skin.

The two days spent within the covert since returning had not been time enough to replace it – so how is it that he wears it here? Wherever here is - The forest is utterly unfamiliar to him.

Has he been lying asleep, whilst around him burned this nightmare? Why didn’t he wake before?

How exactly did he come to be here?

His moment of distraction has done nothing to slow the inferno, but apart from the one incursion of falling branches the clearing is oddly devoid of flame. He gets to his feet - even the grass that grows within the circle is only charred a little. When he looks back at the patch where he lay upon awakening, there is the shape of a man painted in verdant green like a reverse blast shadow among the blades.

Glancing up again at the moon, perfectly centred within the clearing, he frowns. He was taught the lunar phases as a child, as all fey are, and the moon last night had been a few days from waning, sharp as a tooth. Yet this moon is full, pregnantly round, and the moon’s face which seems sometimes to sing and others to howl now weeps dark tears. As he gazes upon their strange shadows, Gawain feels the cold creep up his spine and his skin raise gooseflesh.

He _knows_ those marks. They are familiar as an old melody once forgotten. He seeks their answer, the face which bears them true.

There are whispers gathering at the edge of hearing, barely audible over the crackling flame. He knows these too.

The Hidden.

They spoke to him in the Green, that realm of sunlight and peace he’d slipped into upon death, and he recognises their voices. Perhaps they will give him answers. His eyes close, and he allows the flame and darkness, the sounds of the forest fire to fall away until the whispers of the Hidden fill his head with their spider-silk song.

_Knight of the Green… Gawain. Come, hunter, your quarry awaits._

-

Lancelot kneels before the Father, trying to make his posture neat, his hands folded correctly. It’s difficult, he doesn’t quite have full coordination over all his limbs yet, and in supplication his head barely rises to the knees of the man. He cannot check by sight whether the Father approves, and would be too fearful anyway. Instead he lowers his eyes in the way he’s been taught is respectful, allowing the curls gold as honeycomb to spill down his shoulders and around his face, that they might hide any tears he fails to keep from falling.

**“God sees all. He sees your past and the wickedness that lies there. Yet fear not, for I shall take it all from you; your name, your people, the demon tongue you speak – until you are pure.”**

The Father says he’s too old to cry, but the memory of his mother’s hands blackened with soot, of her screams still echoing becomes too much, and the salt breaks forth again. He is weak.

When the man moves his steps seem almost liquid, floating. Lancelot watches him without turning his head until the Father moves out of eyeline behind his back, and then screws up his eyes and listens. He can imagine the expression – serene and proud, pepper-greying hair tonsured and mouth full of kindness that only sometimes appears cruel. He hears the rustle of arms folding; pictures again those arms corded with muscle and strong fingers, and he does not struggle when the locks of hair are gathered from around his face and pulled back against his skull.

**”You leave that life behind you. That boy is no more, cleansed by the grace of God.”**

He hears the singing of a knife, and as his head is tilted back he opens his eyes once more. If this is to be his last moment, if his throat is to be slit, then he will spend it gazing upon the sky, open and free and beautiful.

The stars shine so brightly.

There is a man watching him.

Lancelot’s eyes widen – the man is dressed not as the Father and his Red Monks, but in splendid armour of green and helmed with antlers like a noble stag; a warrior. He stands but a few feet away, and the dark eyes hidden within the helm stare in astonishment at Lancelot and the Father.

“Who are you?” Lancelot whispers, his tears still flowing and following the path of his birthmarks, round the apple curves of his cheeks that his mother had so loved.

The knife slices across his scalp. Lancelot feels it as mere sensation first, then shock, then pain, blooming like a flower through his skull. The shorn golden curls fall around him, a halo of blood and light, and Lancelot can barely breathe through the raging of the wound. He can feel the slickness run down his neck and into the collar of his smock, staining it crimson.

A desperate, dreadful smile tears a gash across Lancelot’s face, teeth bared and beatific, and the man before them gasps, clapping a hand to his mouth as Lancelot’s blood begins to drip into his eyes. Perhaps he can smell it.

“Are you a demon? Or an angel?” Lancelot asks, unresisting as the Father throws the knife aside with a clink. There is no point resisting whatever the priest has in store; he has learnt already that resistance breeds agony, and the Father is working only for his good.

The scent of heated iron tests that resolve.

**”You will be reborn a warrior of God, moulded by my hand to be the sword which strikes down the wicked and the unrighteous. And I shall wield you.”**

There is a young man among the Father’s acolytes, one Brother Salt, who has shown an aptitude for wringing truth from the lips of the unwilling – Lancelot knows this, for he had been forced to watch one of these confessions his second night in the Red Camp. Terrifying heated shards of carved metal had been a particular favourite of Salt’s, and when the victim – the baker’s son from Lancelot’s village, who had sneaked him misshapen rolls when Lancelot whined about how long it was ‘til supper – is a twisted ruin, the Father had clapped Salt on the back and offered him better tools for doing the work of God.

This one, however, Lancelot is already familiar with – the cross that glows white like a miniature sun, too bright to look at directly. He knows its use, knows the cry of terror he cannot hold back will not save him as the brand is lowered to the still raw flesh of his crown.

**”You are fey no more.”**

He screams.

Scream does not do it justice; the howl tears out of him like a beast clawing its way up his throat, and his vision goes white. He cannot move, cannot breathe, his body seizing and spine rigid. His chest is bursting open, yet there is no relief, only this endless moment, blind and lightning-bright and agonising.

There is a choke, the ringing of a blade, and a sick, wet crunch.

The pain fades.

Lancelot forces his eyes open – just in time to see the body of the Father fall, throat open to the vertebrae. The branding iron falls from slack fingers, but the looming green warrior does not stop, driving his longsword home point down through the gap between the collar bones, through lungs, stomach, bowels. The corpse drops to its knees and no further, pinned as it is by the warrior’s pommel under its chin.

The warrior’s hands are shaking on the sword grip.

“One death is not enough for this man.” He murmurs, his voice diamond.

Lancelot’s body is all over tremor, terror, and he falls forward on hands and knees retching into the grass. Horror and relief and agony fight a bitter war within him, and he has not the strength to feel them all at once yet all demand his attention, so he wavers until the void of unconsciousness threatens his vision.

The Father, source of love and pain and rules to which he has desperately tried to adapt, lies slain, and before his eyes the body begins to wither, as if desiccating in the sun. The face shrivels to a mummified horror, the limbs curling in rictus, red robes rotting and falling away to reveal skeletal remains.

This time, Lancelot does throw up.

Within moments, the warrior’s sword pins not a man, but a collection of bones, and then even those begin to turn to dust, the blood slicked along the blade eroding like sand until the man stands, still shaking, a statue of a sentry in the desolate forest, two hands still grasped around the sword planted deep in the earth.

He cannot help the cry of fear and desolation which escapes him, any more than he can help scrambling back from the warrior as he takes a knee before Lancelot – holding out a hand. He is akin to a monster, horns now appearing more as those of a demon than a stag, and though the Father’s blood has faded still it splashes across his helm in Lancelot’s mind.

The warrior looks pained, almost guilty, and drops his sword. It thumps to the grass unheeded, and then he is stripping the gloves from his fingers, lifting the helm away and – and he’s just a man.

Just a man, hair fluffy and damp from sweat beneath the helm, face scruffed like Lancelot’s father had once been before the Red Brothers strung him up on a scaffold.

The first touch of their fingers raises gooseflesh on Lancelot’s arms. Slowly, watching for any movement, he steps forward. Knelt down like this, Lancelot’s face comes to just below the warrior’s chin, and the man remains so still he mustn’t be breathing at all as Lancelot hesitantly tucks himself in there.

Arms fold around Lancelot’s small body, and hold him; soft. Gentle. Safe.

Once, he’d been embraced every day; now the touch feels like coming home after a long winter’s travel, cold and lonely. He feels tears prickle again and buries his face in the man’s neck, breathes in the scent like bonfire smoke. He’s always loved the smell of fires.

The movement jostles his head and something catches on the edge of the wound; he whimpers, and the arms around him slacken.

“Let me see.” The warrior says.

“It hurts.” The boy whispers.

“I know.” Lancelot can hear the sorrow in his voice, ocean-deep. “I know. I’m sorry.”

_I’m sorry I couldn’t save you._

The words echo around them, and Lancelot looks up, casts his eyes around but sees nothing but the warrior, posture defeated even though his was the blow which ended the fight. Lancelot puts his hands, so small in comparison, in the man’s own.

There’s a rushing noise in his ears, whispers at the edge of his hearing. His tongue feels heavy, like the weight of more than just his own voice lies behind it.

“You did save me.”

There’s regret, sorrow and guilt thick enough to taste in the man’s eyes. The smell of flesh, dead and rotting and charred, is heady in the air like sickly perfume, and Lancelot can almost feel it settling on his hair. Another tremor runs through him, shiver-cold.

The man seizes Lancelot’s hands, firm but still so gentle. “Don’t forget about them. The people who loved you.”

“Who?” Lancelot asks.

“The Ash Folk.” _The Ash Folk._ There’s something strange happening to the warrior’s voice, like many voices speaking at once, overlaid and underlying the words.

Gathering in the darkness around them, Lancelot sees them, and gasps; there are shadows, faceless and insubstantial, pressing between the trees. Lancelot can see the starlight right through them, but he feels no apprehension as they approach, close enough to touch.

They have no form, and yet once all around he sees they have the suggestion of faces; and every face is marked like his own.

There, one with diamonds beneath where its eyes might have been, another with a stylised flame between the space of its brows, yet another with dark trails leaking from the suggestion of a mouth. And there, crouched at the warrior’s side, one incorporeal hand stretched out towards him, fingers fading in the half-light – tear tracks, so very like his own.

_Mama?_

_Don’t forget. Don’t forget us._ They speak in Ash Tongue and he is already forgetting, but the words come still easy to his lips as the tears to his eyes.

“I won’t. I promise.”

The warrior opens his arms again and Lancelot steps into them unafraid, even as he is lifted from the ground and held against the man’s chest. The armour ought to be uncomfortable, but somehow it is giving everywhere Lancelot is bony and firm everywhere he is soft – he fits perfectly in the man’s embrace.

They are still surrounded by the ghostlike figures of the Ash Folk, but as the warrior turns they begin to slip away, until only the one with the ash tears is left. It - _she?_ follows at Lancelot’s side as the man strides forth into the forest, leaving his sword and his helm behind in the grass.

“Come, little one, let us leave this place.”

Lancelot wants to go – really, he does, but something catches in his chest like cloth hooked upon a branch. He looks down at his hands and they are already turning see-through as gauze.

“I can’t.”

Sound fades like his fingers - The warrior’s gaze is frantic, voice urgent as he speaks, but Lancelot isn’t listening. He feels only peace. His people are with him, and when he needed rescue he was saved.

Tucking his head beneath the man’s chin again, he lets the smell of bonfire smoke take him away into the black.

-

_How long, O Lord. Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?_

The hated whispers are all around him. They press at his body like fragments of cloth, twisting around his legs, wrists, throat.

He kneels in the ash and dirt, where he belongs, where all like him belong, one step removed from a living corpse. His hands hang by his sides, next to his knives; long and wicked and dripping with the blood of his last kill.

He is the sword of the morning, God’s blade to smite the unrighteous. He is wrapped in leather and forged from steel, and his edges are sharp enough to cut the unwary.

Weapons do not speak, unless they sing out in battle, and he is no different, tongue silenced. Let his swords do the talking, if anything about him must.

The cowl shields his face from the world; both for his own sake and for the sake of any who might look upon the shame he wears on his face. It is a vanity, to want to hide, but the Father permits it as a method of making him more intimidating to God’s enemies.

The forest blazes around him, and he longs for fire in his heart again but it is all ash and bone and death.

He is the hunter, though he is like his prey. Tracker, though his own scent is akin to those he seeks. Deathbringer, though his own life is forfeit. He is the Weeping Monk, scourge and terror of the land.

The wounds on his back are scarring – there will be time enough for a new set soon, to cleanse him again and keep him from growing too weak. He draws close the memory of the sound of the whip, its kiss, the sting of salt in the wounds to keep them from becoming infected; the taste of blood on his tongue as he bites through his flesh to keep silent. This, too, is cleansing.

_How long, O Lord._

The Father holds out a hand, and the child he killed a long time ago might have flinched. He knows better now. The blessing settles on his brow like a physical touch, a weight, grounding, dragging him down.

He is the Father’s to command. There is nothing else.

 **"Rise, my son.”** He rises. His eyes remain lowered, for he has the proper humility of the servant before his master. **"Behold".**

A demon stands watching.

 **"Behold the Green Knight, demonic hunter of the innocent, enemy of God.”** Tall and broad, noble in bearing and strong in arm, the demon looks every inch the legendary warrior. **"Destroy it.”**

He is made for no other purpose. The knives are extensions of his arms, and the demon barely raises its sword in time to parry. The blades sing against each other in glorious harmony.

Thrust, dodge, weave, slice.

This close, he can see the thing’s eyes beneath the faceplate. It looks akin to a man – like him – but demons often do. The Father has shown him again and again that many foul things wear the guise of the fair, and this demon is fair indeed.

Its eyes are wide, shock and surprise and urgency as it defends, desperation in every block. It does not attempt to strike back.

Well, more fool it, for he will not be swayed by a pair of pleading eyes, beautiful though they are.

_How long, O Lord._

It knows how to move, that is certain; it has been long since he danced with another so skilled. It must be a champion of its kind, the skill with a sword and the crested armour speaking what words might hide. Once more their blades clash, and he is pulled up close to the demon, sharing its breath. His body is all sparks and torchlight, and he feels the answering thrum within the demon, attuned to one another. It overwhelms his senses – the sound of its gasp, the flash of green under the helm’s gaze, the mouth which twists and opens, the smell of its sweat and musk like a pine forest green and growing and burning to ash.

He cuts off any filthy words before they can be spoken, sweeping a leg beneath it and stealing the breath from its lungs as it staggers. With one dancing step aside, he launches into one of the pirouette attacks which so frustrate and confuse his opponents.

The demon parries easily. Its speed and strength are is maddening – and confusing, for he is certain he has never fought this enemy before, yet it seems to anticipate his movements. At his back, the Father shifts, and the rustle of robes renews his fervour.

It seems to sense his resolve and grits its teeth, muttering a curse that should not be so surprising in its crudity. _Foul things wear the guise of the fair._

He is fluent in the play of battle, the language of thrust and weave and the footwork dance across the field, and it is clear the demon means to move toward the Father. Yet still it refuses to strike back, to meet his swift and ruthless blows with any counterattack. He snarls, and tries and fails again.

Beating himself against the wall of its body is beginning to take a toll; speed is his style, a quick conquest over before his opponent can recover their balance, their wits or their blade. Now even his most acrobatic leaps provoke merely a sidestep, as if the demon knows his movements before he makes them, or it has fought him before.

Yet this he knows as the light of truth - he is the Weeping Monk, the sword in God’s hand, and all foes fall eventually.

Finally the demon is caught with a risky feint, its movements too slow as he slips in, opening a gash on its sword arm and digging the knife beneath the armpit. It grunts in shock, a furious, pained exhale, and staggers again. He feels almost disappointed; is that to be it? Such a magnificently armoured creature, such skill, and all it can offer is a brief distraction before falling to a lucky strike?

_How long, O Lord._

But a hand lashes out – the demon grabs a handful of his jerkin and tugs him forward until they are chest to chest. The scent of pine and smoke overwhelms him again, and he snarls, bracing. His knife reflects the flame as he brings it down in an arc that will meet flesh where the helm exposes the throat.

“Lancelot.”

The word is a kick to the solar plexus, and he is winded. His eyes are wide as he meets the demon’s gaze.

How? _How_ does this creature know the name he laid aside so long ago?

His pause is all the opportunity the demon needs.

It darts forward, and he shouts, reaches, but is too late; the monster’s blade bites into the side of the Father’s neck in a slick beheading.

The grey-crowned skull – still placid and righteous even in the face of death – rolls to his feet, and he feels the rage rise up in him like a storm-tossed wave.

His vengeance is quick, blows merciless– the demon takes two slashes to the back before it gets its sword in order, and then it is a game of merely keeping him at bay; unable to strike even if that had been its aim.

How dare, how _dare_ it take from him the only one who could save him from the eternal flame, the one whose words built the foundations of his life. How dare it know his name.

Blood pounds in his ears, and he feels no pain.

“Lancelot, stop. You are free of him!” It cries, but he ignores it. No words can stop him. He is God’s sword, made to cleanse the unrighteous.

“You cannot ‘free’ me, demon.” He snarls. “I am in no cage. I carry the Father’s words inside me, and you have no power over them.”

Another slice across the demon’s sword arm and he feels it falter. He presses the advantage, backing them up until the demon is pinned against the bark of one of the flaming trees.

He feels the heat on his face, but disregards it. Hellfire cannot touch him, not when he is doing God’s work. He raises the knife to the demon’s throat, all muscles tensed against resistance.

There is none.

Instead, the demon goes pliant in his arms, sword falling to its side, and there is something resigned in those eyes which reflect only the flame. No fear, no blame, no fury for its killer, only a weariness and acceptance he knows not what to do with. He wants to take the strike, to finish the task and send the demon back from whence it came.

He wants to push close and breathe in the heady pine musk, leather and steel and the taint of magic all demons carry, to press his knife to the creature’s throat and his mouth to its mouth and see if its tongue tastes of smoke and hellfire.

And oh, those eyes! This close he sees them shadowed, blazing beneath the darkness of the helm, and a shiver rolls down his spine at being the centre of all that focus. There is nothing like the knowledge of being an enemy’s whole world, all they see, all they feel, of being the perfect eye of the storm.

This close, he can feel the tremors running through them both, can almost hear the blood pumping in its veins, feel the heartbeat through its chest and the thin layers of leather and cloth which separate their skins.

Is the demon beautiful all over? The thought comes unbidden like a flash of pain-pleasure-shock that strikes him as a stone strikes the surface of a pool, leaving him all ripples and waves.

Does a demon’s skin carry the salt of a man? Would this creature taste like him? Does its heart beat in the same rhythm? Would its body look the same, feel the same, react the same to cuff or caress?

The demon is frozen as he, eyes widened and fixed upon his own save for the journeys down to his lips and back, breathless, burning, panting in each other’s faces; it tastes not of sulphur but sweet and sour as any other man, like the heat of battle, like bread and meat and wine and warmth.

The moment stretches, too brittle, like it could snap and bring the whole foundation of the forest down with it. He knows not what might happen if it did – whether the heat and bloodlust would come out in knives or teeth, bites or kisses to each others’ flesh. He’s faltering, wavering in his duty and he cannot bear it, vengeance and righteous fury and the cold flood of battle all he knows – yet the demon’s eyes whisper of another world beyond, where all that heat might be turned to other use. Passion, and yet destruction still - for how could one couple with a demon, even as a demon himself, except in mutually assured destruction?

He is caught, falling into he knows not what, and he cannot feel the ground beneath his feet nor hear the whispers nor remember why they are pinned here – there is only this, only now.

He hesitates too long.

**”Destroy it, my son. God sees all.”**

Behind him, the rustle of cloth. He spins, the thrill of guilt and grief and astonishment like lightning and he aches, and there before him stands the Father.

The man is whole, healed and unbloodied. There is nothing but empty, placid command in his eyes.

“Father…” He hesitates. It is a mistake.

**”You would question me? God’s hand? Was it not I who brought you out of darkness? Was it not I who cleansed you of your wicked birth, who gave you the tools to purify yourself? Was it not I who placed you on the road to salvation?”**

The words are harsh thunder and his falter instinctive at their bite, critique falling on his shoulders with as much power as the whip. His grip is lax and the demon’s hands a subtle distraction; he realises what is about to occur only a moment before.

The monster’s blade buries itself in the Father’s throat and the old man’s eyes bulge, tongue sticking out and an awful choking coming from within as he collapses backward – body taking the sword with it.

Weaponless, the demon yields once more, and with a great exhausted sigh reaches up and removes the faceplate, tossing the helm aside.

He was right; its face is beautiful – dark and auburn-gold in the firelight, nobility and baseness together. The whispers crowd around him and their song is poison.

The kiss is his own doing – any blame he might place on the demon itself is made empty by the sound he hears himself make as their lips meet, a cry like a wounded, feral animal. He bites down, tastes blood and _feels_ the groan it gives in response. He wants to hurt it, to devour it whole, to touch every inch of skin; so soft, except where hot and hard as iron beneath the armour.

Hands free, it grips his waist, and he is a fool, a damned careless wastrel for forgetting – there are more ways than weapons to take a life and he has left himself open to many of them. Yet those fingers seek no pain, it seems; tight enough to make him feel secure, a grounding force that has desperations written in every twitch of muscle and tendon. There is frantic desire in the way it kisses back, opens its mouth beneath his onslaught and lets him take, bite, rule, ruin as he wishes.

Then worse, the hands stroke up his sides and leave shivers in their wake, the tremors of an earthquake under his skin, ice water and lye and the sweet burst of fruit on his tongue.

He snatches those wicked hands away, pins them above the demon’s head, snarling in its face and feeling exhilaration rush through him as it is met with an answered bearing of teeth and a half-growl, half-grin. He swallows the sound, and their mouths in concert are a howl he feels with his whole being.

The demon’s wrists flex and he feels his own muscles strain to keep them pinned – the struggle is close and when it lets up he wonders if truly it could escape but chooses to remain. The thought is heady as true domination – that such a monster would place itself in his power – foolish indeed but dizzying yet.

It feels like everything he is made for, and the realisation is horror enough to push him back; the demon looks drunk on lust, and he has fallen for the trick; let himself be pulled in and corrupted just as the Father feared he would.

“You-“ He chokes, and somehow his swords have been discarded too, lost in their frenzy – he still has the demon pressed up against the tree bodily, but now his hands wrap around that throat, feels the furious pulse beneath his palm. The skin’s warmth makes his hands tingle and he wrenches the noticing away, pushing such observations to the back of his mind where they belong. This _monster_ slew his Father, and he is truly a monster himself for engaging in such entanglement. He croaks, “You would slay a miracle?”

“I planned none of this.” The demon pants, voice wrecked, the sound twisting in his gut. “You know, somehow I thought you would be easier to convince. I had forgotten how shadow-blasted strong you are.”

His knuckles are white where they grip the demon’s gambeson, and he bares his teeth again. “What foul magic did you work upon the Father to raise him from death?”

The demon huffs. “None to my knowledge. The Hidden playing games.”

The Hidden. The fey false gods, no doubt demons working their own plans. The whispers that swirl around him press forth again and he takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and willing them away.

It watches him. There’s sorrow and something horribly akin to compassion in its gaze, and he despises it. He can still taste it and hates the knowledge, knows he will never be free of the memory of sweet hot kisses, of blood and smoke and sweat and lies under his tongue. “Even now, you defend him? After he did all that to you?”

“You know nothing of devotion. Of faith.” He spits. “The Father is - _was_ teaching me to cast out the taint of the filth within. All his work was to save me from the fires of hell.”

“Hell is no punishment for being what you are, Lancelot.” It says quietly. “And look around.” The demon’s arm shakes with exhaustion as it gestures, hopeless. “Is a burning forest where you want to spend eternity?”

The demon is looking at him with something too much like pity and too much like understanding. “Once, you had people who loved you. You could have that again.” It’s impossible, impossible, and he is going to shake apart with it, with the lies that worm their way beneath his skin and eat him up with useless longing from within.

A twig cracks nearby. **”God is love, my son.”**

The Father stands a few feet distant, arms folded in calm assurance, gaze knowing, as if the demon’s touch has left marks and his shame, his weakness is exposed like a raw nerve, visible for all to see. The scrutiny is punishing. He has knelt for this man a thousand times, bared his brow and his back and his blood for this man’s benediction. He tastes iron – the flesh of his inner mouth bleeds where he teeth tear, and the taste sharpens him.

A miracle, given twice over already; one he must not, cannot disregard so easy – but it’s already too late.

The demon takes advantage of his shock once more, and with a pained grunt twists out of his grip and reverses their positions, lifting him bodily from the ground with its astonishing strength and holding him pinned against the bark. The movement is so swift it slams the breath from his lungs and he is left, choking and spitting breathless curses. The bark is harsh and unyielding against his penance wounds and the pain blindsides him as several reopen under the scratch of the wood. The forest fire roars unabated around him, and the smoke scent fills his nose and curdles his mind.

The demon _throws_ its sword through the Father’s chest; the blow knocks him back and the man crumples to the ground in a sprawl of crimson cloth and limbs.

Even the demon itself looks shocked by this feat of athleticism, and it frowns. “When I said one death was too few for that man, I did not envision having to deliver them all myself.”

The first death had left him raging, the second shaken and out of his head; this third desecration has something hard and cold emerging within his chest, a core of bitter pain, of hatred, pure and uncomplex. It feels not formed but uncovered, as if he has always had this within him, drawn forth by the deaths of the Father before his eyes and his own failure, the linked betrayals of his allowing this monster to kill and yet sating upon it his desire – he hates in this moment not only the monster but also himself, and the cold hard steel of his own body, his fury and blindness, everything about him that leaves him weak. He even, for a moment, hates the Father himself; for his part in failing to fix him, for leaving him so fragile and broken, for never being able to take his nature away.

He is blank, going for his knives, but the demon pins him in a reverse of their former tableau, slamming his head back against the tree with a blow that makes his head swim, the sticky wet feeling of blood at the base of his skull. Now, his wrists are the ones held in a grip so tight it could bruise – he hopes it does, bitter grief and anger swirling through him, he hopes it leaves the kind of scars he can use to remember this fight, the triumph that is now certain will be his as he sees what must be done, spurred on by the core of hatred deep within. Even through the glaze that blurs his vision being held so still grounds him once more, a thread of calm and peace seeping into his mind like clear water in silt, and he gives himself over to the feeling, to the desire to writhe and arch under the demon’s hands.

He presses his body forward against the armour, and the demon curses again, switching to grasp his wrists with one hand – only one hand! And yet its grip is steel, and the reminder of the demon’s strength makes another wave of desire and peace crash over him – and its other hand dragging down his front towards his belt.

His stomach twists, throat seizing; no hand but his has made this journey, but in this moment his desire and hatred are one and he tilts his head back, baring his throat like a submissive hound and the demon takes it as the permission it is.

There are a dozen ways to kill when you have a body by the cock, but the strong fingers that take him in hand push all that knowledge clear out of his head. His hardness comes as no surprise but the difference in feeling from his own hand leaves him breathless, every touch more sensitive as he cannot predict or control it. He feels every inch as the hand makes a long, slow slide along his length and the twist to the head has him jerking back against the wood and biting back a desperate, gasping sob.

Bonfire smoke and sweet salt, the demon’s mouth takes his with a hunger that matches his own, and his awareness is split between the wicked tongue in his mouth and the fiendish fingers that rub across his slit, dragging the foreskin down and spreading the slick around and up while he pants and whines. He’s _dripping_ with it, every drop a betrayal of everything he’s lived for, and he sobs through grit teeth even as he presses closer, traitorous body asking for more where his words cannot.

It’s torture, the drag of the demon’s hand as it begins a rhythm far too slow, dipping down to pass over his balls and behind, the most vulnerable parts of his flesh and he’s too far surrendered and cannot pull it back, can do nothing but shake and spread his legs and he hates, he hates and he yearns and the disappointment is just as bitter as the hatred as that hand pulls back and returns to his cock.

This time, the rhythm is faster, firm and just wet enough with the evidence of his desire, each stroke accompanied by that cruel, wonderful twist at the cockhead. His head falls forward onto the demon’s shoulder, arms wrenching as the position pulls at his bound wrists – yet he needs the scent at the base of its throat, breathing it in and feeling utterly out of his head. He sinks his teeth into the flesh beneath, and the demon groans and tightens its grip to the point of agony – the spasm takes his whole body, the sudden constriction and white, delicious pain tipping him over the edge as he keens and bites down hard.

The blood is hot and alive in his mouth, and he is drunk, sparking all over. The pulse beneath the skin is rabbit-quick and stag-pounding, and he bites again to feel it stutter under his tongue. The demon groans again, voice low and ruinous. “ _Stars_ , your teeth.”

His grin is bloody, his eyes hooded and vision swaying, but the way the demon looks at him sets him aflame again and he _wants_. It withdraws its hand coated white with his spend, and seems uncertain what to do – he feels the dizzy desire to take those fingers into his mouth and lick away all evidence.

“Let me-“ He murmurs, and stops, clearing his throat and trying to blink away the sweet, heady fog. “Let me touch you.”

The demon has misgivings, that much is clear by the hesitation and doubt in its eyes, but he lets the full magnitude of his desire flow forth and looks down at the hand still messy with his own spend, letting his want show.

Another curse, filthy and fervent and those lips are back on his, and the grip is loosening. He jerks a hand away, but it is snatched up at once and he breaks the kiss to find himself caught by both wrists. One is twisted up behind his back and held firm, the other pulled forwards to the belt, and he mimics the demon’s slow slide down the metal and lets his nails scrape across the armour. The rough drag provokes a shudder in the creature and he allows a smug grin to paint across his face.

The glorious green armour is harder to push aside than his own jerkin, but with two hands working not entirely in sync they manage to free a space enough for him to insinuate his hand beneath the leather.

The demon still has his wrist in a firm grasp and his movement is stifled, but it is more blessing than curse as he realises the shaking in his fingers is not just anticipation but nervousness.

Touching another is so alike and yet so alien to touching himself. Hot, hot and different to his own in unexpected places, and the angle is something he cannot wrap his head around at first, wrists cramping as he tries to twist in unfamiliar ways.

Yet as chaste as his interactions with other bodies have been, he has known his own flesh in every way it can be known. Learning his way around another cock is an exercise in physical mastery, just as the dance of the fight and the perfect thrusting knife blow.

The demon certainly seems to have no complaints, as it leans forward and pants, forehead pressed against his own. This close he can see the flecks of gold in those hazel eyes, embers in the forest, its scent all around, smoke in his nose and lungs and head. Bent by the arm bound behind him it is a challenge to slouch enough to delve deeper, to twist the hand which strokes along heated, slick flesh until he can reach beneath and back.

The patch of skin behind the balls is soft as silk and the demon bites out a growling curse and shakes as he rubs there, careful here to keep his nails a teasing brush. Then even further back, and the demon’s body goes hard and tense and shocked as he lets his forearm press the cockhead to green leather and circles the hole with his finger.

“You-“ It chokes, and he smiles again, pressing just enough to be teasing as he gives the other wrist, bound behind his back and unable to assist with the proceedings, a pointed tug. There’s that hesitation again but bit by bit those fingers release, until finally his arm is free to join its partner in bringing the demon to the edge.

He spits into his palm, and the demon groans again at the sight, and at his grin as he slides his other hand beneath the armour and into its breeches, taking up the weeping cock and using the saliva to slick his way as he pumps. His other hand edges the twitching hole, caressing and pressing and dipping in, to the first knuckle of his middle finger. 

He builds a rhythm with merciless hands and fingers until the demon is thrusting into the ring of his palm and grunting, groaning into his ear. Its arms block him in, either side of his head, auburn hair brushing his cheek as it lays its forehead down on his shoulder to watch his hands at work. His arms ache, but it’s worth it for the noise the demon makes as he thrusts his finger in deeper, the abandon with which it shakes apart as he speeds his strokes until with a sudden cry it jerks, body gripping his finger tight and spilling liquid flame over his hand.

Over the expanse of its broad shoulders, he watches the fires burn.

It moans and shakes as he withdraws, and makes no complaint as he wipes the seed on its breeches; the sign it is truly distracted.

It has forgotten – his arms are no longer pinned.

The steel is in his hands.

This time his blades strike true; the beast in his heart howls in victory and vengeance as deep rents open in the demon’s arm and throat, and as it falls back he bears down with it, using the leverage of his knives to force it to the floor underneath him.

It lands with a crash, breeches still loose, face still flushed and hair slick with sweat at the roots.

The demon with the face of a beautiful man stares up, mouth open and bloody. Something wet and crimson moves in its throat as it tries to speak, but the words do not come; he has silenced them just as he wished, and any crush in his heart is inconsequential, meaningless-

Even now there is no anger in those eyes, and even the surprise fades with the blood from its cheeks, gaze filling instead with yearning.

The arm not ruined reaches up toward his face. It is slow, sedate, and he should easily avoid it but he is frozen as if still pinned up against the tree – weak, guilt and horror building within him.

The touch to his cheek is a brand. He jerks back, but even the light brush has set his skin aflame, sparking, and he feels the imprint of the fingers left behind like a scar.

His skin crawls; he can still feel the damp between his thighs, still smell the salt-sour tang of their spend in the air – the same, their seed smells the same because they grew from the same ground – and the core of hatred that had been buried within him cracks and bleeds, haemorrhaging in his gut like a fatal wound. 

Is this remorse? Is this what kills him?

He is not skilled at parsing expressions but the demon looks… sad. _Sad_ , like it had feelings, like it was more than a being made of fury, and it should not surprise him after the twisted exchange they had made but it does, now that the hatred is seeping out of him and leaving only horror behind.

Instead of anger, there is naught but sorrow in its eyes as it coughs up more blood. _I’m sorry_. Its lips form words without sound and he feels unmoored, the floor beneath their bodies falling away.

“Why?” His voice is harsh as the question bursts free, though he knows there can be no reply. “I have done all to you – you and your kind dead by my hand.” His voice is rusty from disuse and hoarse with agony.

_Our kind, Lancelot._

“How know you such things?” His throat is seizing, he can barely whisper the words.

But the demon’s time is come. Those lips – already turning blue – form final words, _born in the dawn-_ and are stilled.

The hand which had cupped his cheek is yet warm, and where it touches he feels the pulse beneath his skin, calling out for an answer. The answer does not come.

The demon’s arm falls, and he seizes it before he can truly understand what it is he does – but the flesh is dead weight and the demon’s eyes are glassy.

He cannot seem to move from his position astride the corpse. There is a roaring in his ears, the whispers pressing thick and fast around him, choking him, drifting across his eyes and mouth and he cannot breathe, he cannot understand-

“Why? Tell me why!” He leans forward, grips the collar of the demon and raises it up; the head lolls back, lifeless.

A drop lands on the scruffed cheek, and he stares at it before registering the sting in his eyes, the blurring of his vision.

Tears? He has not cried for an age.

_How long, O Lord._

His scream is soundless as it rises to the weeping moon; his twin, silent as the grave, has no answers.

 **”My son.”** The words land like a physical blow and he twists, wretched and torn open, still crouched over the body, cringing away from the familiar form. The terrible, impossible apparition yet stands before him, hands stained with blood and ash, the bite of iron and salt in the wound.

The Father’s eyes are so empty.

“It was sad. It was sad – for me!” He spits, the revelation washing over him.

**”It was a demon, wicked and bloodthirsty. You are God’s weapon, the God who sees all, whose love purifies and cleanses.”**

He cannot think straight. Drawn inexorably back to the body, he becomes aware of the pounding of this heart, the roaring in his ears. “It didn’t even fight back!” It had _allowed_ him to kill it, he is suddenly certain. It had not wanted to hurt him.

_Once, you had people who loved you. You could have that again._

The skin of the demon’s neck beneath his hands is already cooling; he hasn’t let go of the collar.

His discarded blade flashes, catching the moonlight, and suddenly he is stood over the body of the demon and facing down the Father with his weapons in hand. He is shaking apart, his breath coming so fast he feels dizzy with it, the leather grip beneath his hands cutting rivets into his flesh. Is it anger or despair which moves him so? He cannot tell – does not even know whose throat the knives will find their way into at the end of his next breath.

There is no fear in the old man’s face; his eyes are cold and cruel.

Perhaps they have always been so.

The blade parts skin from skin, flesh from flesh, bone from bone. Blood rises forth and covers them both, hot and bitter on his tongue, until he has tears of pitch and crimson on his cheeks.

Nothing but disappointment fills the Father’s eyes as his body falls, and this time, he knows, it will last.

He feels the change in the air as whatever magic kept the old man from peace finally relents. The wrinkled face shrivels before his eyes, the clothes rotting away to nothing, but he cannot summon energy to be horrified by such gore, even mystical and strange as it is. Cannot summon much of anything, in fact – his chest is a sucking void.

He is alone now; truly alone. His blades fall and disappear before his eyes, but he does not question it. He has killed now his old life and the seed of anything new.

He goes to his knees in the grass, prostrate this time not for the Father but before the corpse of the demon which has remained where the old priest had not.

The forest is burning out, ash like snowfall settling on his hair and tongue. It tastes of nothing at all.

_How long, O Lord._

The last of the dust which had once been Father Carden blows away in the wind, and finally, like a glacier crash, Lancelot remembers everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prayer Lance is quoting is psalm 13, one of my favourites and PERFECT for him. Yes I know he probably wouldn’t speak church latin but lets just ignore that because Look At It:
> 
> How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?  
> Consider and answer me, O Lord my God, light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.  
> But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.


	6. Chapter 6

Gawain wakes, which is rather unexpected.

He aches everywhere, which is decidedly less so. He feels trampled, like Squirrel had been using him as a climbing frame or Kaze had taken him on as a training partner again. There is a low ache in his gut and something _moving_ around his throat.

Wait, around his throat? He attempts to lift a hand to check, but his arm remains where it lies, on cold ground. Wrenching, he tries to move even his little finger, but there is no response – it seems his expanse of newfound consciousness is limited to senses, eyes and ears and nose. 

So he is quiet, and listens.

There’s no sound for a long while, only the faint moan of the wind and the occasional snap which could almost be the crackle of the fire in the healing tent were it not for the moon still staring balefully down at him. He pushes down the panic that rises at the stillness, the dreadful fear that he has been left behind in the dream while Lancelot has passed onwards into death or upwards into wakefulness. 

_Do not dwell on such things. You know nothing yet._ He pulls all his faint energy into keeping steady breaths in his lungs.

At least now his mind is less clouded than before, some of the haze of the dream shaken off. The grace allows him to recall in sharp detail everything which came before.

Everything before…. If he could, he would shake his head and grimace a little. As well as the tender, raw feeling in his throat and the blood crusted at his shirt collar there’s cold, damp stickiness on his thighs, already drying. 

It was real then. Real enough, though it happened in this strange place that is and yet is not the Green.

As if provoked by his thoughts of the Green, he feels a faint thread of energy touch the back of his neck like a spider leg, crawling around his collar in a way that would be maddening if it didn’t burn like ice pressed against the flesh as it moves. Everywhere it passes tingles, and as it slithers over the edge of the wound he’s taken back to the crunch of falling, pinned to the ground beneath Lancelot’s body, of the sensation of his vocal cords being sliced though and the awful cold of the night air on the inside of his windpipe. He presses his eyes closed once more as if doing so could push away the memory.

Lancelot – perhaps better to focus upon him. The man’s name is new and fresh in his mind like the first golden dandelion of spring after a long dead winter. He knows not yet what happened, but the instinctive twist in his gut is to hope that Lancelot got away from this place. Even… even if that means Gawain has been left behind. _It’s worth it – it’s worth it._ He repeats to himself. It would be worth much, if Gawain managed to help.

The haze of pleasure followed so quickly by the swallowing tide of pain had rather screwed his memory of their coupling, but he remembers enough to know that Lancelot had been as deeply affected as himself – there had been no lie in the heat of hands and mouths, and the emotions he saw stirred in the man’s eyes had been more complex than mere lust. He had searched and searched, fixed his fading vision on Lancelot as he bled out and seen something there that looked like remorse, even as the man had knelt above him, knife wet with Gawain’s lifeblood. At the time, he had chosen to believe it out of a sense of desperation as the light faded, but now the doubts creep in. Had he only seen what he longed to see?

The calm has returned now, and with peace comes increased awareness of his surroundings. It is the harsh breathing which finally reveals that he is not alone, and the familiar timbre of the edge of voice in those breaths that reveals precisely who lies nearby.

He cannot turn his head, but looking from the corner of his eye he finds the figure of the Monk – kneeling once more, and it’s a kick in the stomach to see the man still, _still_ prostrate. The sight even now has the power to raise a curl of interest in his gut, but it will forever be tainted by visions of the terrified child and the beast of despair and rage that had both knelt before the priest in red and suffered greatly for it. The memories press close once more and he blinks them away, thoughts swirling before being brought suddenly up short as he catches movement beyond Lancelot’s dark robes.

The two of them are not alone.

At first, he thinks the dread which settles in his stomach like a ball of ice is at the prospect of the monstrous priest’s return yet again. Yet none of those bizarre Hidden-wrought resurrections had produced this prickling, roiling _fear_ beneath his skin. 

He feels sick, horrified and _scared_ , like a child once more and hiding beneath the bed, lying awake in the darkness staring at shadowy corners, fearing the monsters that lay behind the door. His heart races, his lungs seize and even the air seems to get colder as he strains for a glimpse, holding his breath as he listens, trying to perceive their visitor. Could it be some shade from Lancelot’s past? An incarnation of the Hidden, walking in the Green like a god?

_"You know why I come."_

The voice is the skittering of movement out of the corner of one’s eye in a shrouded graveyard; the itch at the back of one’s neck that means someone hunts you and has their eyes and their bow aimed at your heart; the chill fingers of death on his cheek, down his spine. He knows, with sudden, terrible clarity exactly who stands at the edge of the clearing staring Lancelot down.

The Widow.

He has never seen her before, of course, but he knows her description as all fey do, and realises with a creeping horror that no other could produce the chill in the air that steals over them. No fey warrior is a stranger to the Widow, too many knives in the darkness and bloody axes in the daylight to be unaware of the lingering shadow at the edge of vision, but here, like this? Her cloak fluttering like crow wings at a gibbet, the stench of decay in the air?

She’s come for him – the knowledge is a stone dropped into his gut.

“Who are you?” Lancelot’s voice is the shock of cold river water; Gawain wishes he could sit up and reach for the other man, at the tone in his voice; so defeated, so full of despair. 

_“You do not know me, Weeping Monk?”_ The bitterness which twists her voice surprises Gawain; he had always been taught the Widow was above such petty mortal things as emotions.

“Should I?”

 _Yes. As all fey should._ Gawain thinks, urges. The child who became the Monk had been separated from his heritage. Would he know what it was he faced?

 _“I have come… for a death.”_ Gawain’s heart sinks and his thoughts are a wild tangle. 

“…Mine?” 

_“That is not yet decided.”_

“What if I kill you?” There is no real heat behind the words, and Gawain can see the Lancelot’s expression in his mind’s eye – of neither malice nor threat, bland disinterest in the consequences of his actions masking the soul-deep exhaustion behind.

The Widow laughs, and even paralysed Gawain feels the shiver echo down his spine like a knife across pottery. _“You would regret it. You desire an end, do you not? I can feel it within you. Killing me would deliver you to the very opposite.”_

The Monk, Lancelot, is silent.

 _“Whom shall I take, then?”_ Her voice is light. _“You, or your unfortunate victim? Either one of you is close enough to death that it would be simple to draw you through – and I am not particular.”_

 _Choose me. Choose me!_ Gawain begs unheard. He wrenches his jaw open with supreme force of will but no sound emerges – the icy-hot burn of the magic still twining around his throat. Still he yearns. _You have to live, to heal. To be the warrior the fey need._ And oh, to let Gawain pass into the Green once more and remain there this time, to dwell in that place where he is not called on a daily basis to provide miracles.

Yet in the end, there is only one answer he expects. 

“Take me.” Lancelot says, and there is neither fear nor bravery in his tone – only deep, desperate relief, and this is the worst of it; that Gawain knows what that feels like, because he feels it himself, the knowledge that whatever lies ahead at least there will be rest. 

He cannot bear it – he cannot allow Lancelot to cast aside all he had fought his way through this dreamworld to obtain; his resolve has not faltered since he lay down at the man’s side under Yeva’s watchful glare and sunk into oblivion. If his death can save this man, he will gladly pay the price. 

With all his might, he throws himself into making some sign, anything, anything that will alert the two nearby of his consciousness. 

All he manages is a faint moan.

Yet it is enough – he hears the fair snap of Lancelot’s neck as the man catches the sound and glances down at him. His face is a picture; streaked in dirt, sweat and blood, anguished and desperate – and even now Gawain wants him, drawn again to that dark mouth and the sharp teeth he knows hide within. There is the rustle of mourning skirts across the grass – moving closer. 

Tall, so tall from his helpless position here prone on the grass, towering over him draped in mourning garb, veiled for a funeral. The terrible, sickening fear seizes his heart once again, the temperature dropping, his heart pounding.

 _“Ah, it seems whomever you killed is not ready to leave just ye-“_ Her voice cuts out as if stopped with an executioner’s blade.

There is a beat. “Gawain?”

The tone shift is so abrupt Gawain feels his heart skitter to a stop. The Widow’s voice loses the slate edge, the chill in the air even fades a little. She bends over him like a nightmare and he feels the touch of corpse-cold fingers on his face; eyes, lips, the edge of the wound at his throat.

Then she throws back the veil.

The face which stares down at him is so out of place he cannot comprehend it for a moment, his mind refusing to recognise the features, to locate them here of all places.

_Morgana?_

He tries to speak – it comes out as a raw, deep croak that is just barely words and the dancing frost shards across his vocal cords bite again. “But you are-“

“The Widow? Rather confused right now?”

“Human.” He frowns. “In the Green.”

“Is that where we are? It isn’t very… it’s not what I expected. And about that, I don’t think calling me human is strictly… true, anymore.”

The questions must show on his face, but she waves them away with a sigh. “Look, I’m still getting used to this Widow thing – so much has happened that I need to tell you – but I don’t think we have time. I have been called here to collect a death. I… don’t think I can leave without one.”

She glances back at Lancelot, and when Gawain follows her gaze he finds the man’s eyes fixed on him. 

His expression is cold, unreadable and intense, and Gawain feels naked under it, even bound up in his armour, and being the subject of that focus once more reminds him again of the weight of the man’s cock had felt in his hand, the surprising warmth of his devious hands and the look in Lancelot’s eyes as Gawain shuddered and spilled. 

“Take me instead of him.” 

Lancelot’s eyes go wide at Gawain’s words and he makes a noise, low and pained. “No. Why?” He hisses, and his hands clench around nothing in the dirt. “Why not let me do this? Let me save you, and earn back some fragment of what I have cost you and your kind. Death will be… a relief. Please.”

Gawain feels the great, drowning sorrow roll over him like a wave, and a new helpless pity and grief. 

“I don’t begrudge you your relief, nor your hopelessness.” He murmurs. “I would be a hypocrite to do so.”

“Gawain-“ Morgana is frowning at him, distressed, but now he is the one to wave her questions away. He cannot talk about it, but he sees by the intake of breath and the tightening of the muscles around Lancelot’s eyes that the man has understood him. Has, perhaps, always understood him in this.

“Are you not enemies?” Morgana murmurs.

Are they? Gawain finds himself contemplating the question with far more depth that he might have done before – far more, say, than before he stepped into this dreamworld and saw the knife raised against the child who then took it up in return. How can he call a man his enemy if he has fought and bled and _died_ to save him?

He sees the same introspection in the other man, and it stirs him to answer – not Morgana, but the questions that form between Lancelot and himself. “Once we were. Now… something else, I think.”

There is the slightest of inclines of that graceful head, and the warmth that shoots through him in response is like the first spark, the first green shoot bursting from the seed, not yet breaking ground, small and curled and secret, hesitant, but full of potential.

A potential which now can never be.

“I confess I’d rather take him than you, Gawain.” Morgana looks a little awkward about it, but she is defiant as she stares down the Monk. There _is_ something different about her, even like this; something dark at the edges of her voice, strength and power in the way she carries herself now where before there had been only bravado. “But I will defer to your choice. If you can agree.” She looks doubtful, and Gawain is only too aware of how accurately she perceives their strange, half-formed dance of desire and force and sacrifice.

The jut of Lancelot’s jaw is determined, stubborn and enduring. “Take me.”

“No, take me.” Gawain scowls. “I’ve had my time, and I regret none of it, save perhaps that I did not know you sooner.”

“What about the boy? Percival needs you.” Lancelot’s eyebrow is raised but his voice is ragged – the words are designed to cut as keenly as his knife and Gawain winces at the blow. 

“He needs a friend, not a father.” He murmurs. “He will mourn, but he will be comforted. You could be the one to comfort him.” The blades are turned back and now Lancelot is the one who bows under the pinioning words. “You have known so little love. There is so much for you to discover.”

“None of it will mean anything without you.” 

The words are so quiet he barely hears them, can barely put them together with the man who kneels opposite. 

This is the man who took Bergerum, his beloved comrade and second from him. He feels again the heat of the blaze in the windmill, the certainty of death. There are a hundred battles, a hundred hunts between them, sometimes predator, sometimes prey. The Green seems to twist as he recalls them, and every memory is wrought in vivid detail, an endless torrent to wash him away. 

He feels the Monk’s knife in his gut, the wound which had taken him to the gates of the Red Paladin camp, and the brands of the archangels sear his flesh again. He remembers the furious, desperate look in the Weeping Monk’s eyes when the Green crawled across his skin in the forest, and he realised Gawain knew his secret; and the confusion when he asked Gawain why he’d kept it unrevealed. He remembers the weight of the man’s body, lifting it from the earth by his great horse after he collapsed, and the smell of the tent conflagration burning, choking fabric smoke, the feel of the miraculously unburned skin, the heat of the Monk’s blood – under his fingers the feel of Lancelot’s back where the whip parted flesh, remembers wanting to press his mouth against the scars, to taste the sweat, the blood. 

He remembers the scratch of Yeva’s claws over his heart, drawing out the spark that would keep the Monk from death. He remembers the hollow pale curve of Lancelot’s hip bone under the moonlight in the healing tent, the taste of his tongue and the soft smooth drag of his cock, alive and insistent. He remembers the delirium in the eyes of a tortured child and the soft brush of golden curls against his chest, the smell of the boy’s hair and tiny fingers on his face. He remembers the flash of fire in the grin of the Monk as they battled, the exultant singing of their weapons against one another, and the feel of the flexing wrists under his fingers as he held Lancelot down and wrung pleasure from his twisted, eager body. He remembers the knife – the same knife - in his throat, and the weight on his chest, and the remorse – yes, the remorse – in Lancelot’s eyes.

Could he go back? “Without you… I would not long endure either.”

“I wish I could give you a way to be together.” Morgana’s eyes are red, sorrow swirling around her with the Widow’s chill. Gawain remembers – she had lost someone, hadn’t she? “But I cannot - I am owed a death. I’m so sorry – it’s the shadow magic.”

Are all their sacrifices come to this? 

The pain in his heart flares again, and he placed his hand over the wound, the magic aching – the fragment of his own life which beat beneath the Monk’s breast calling out to the rest. What would it feel like, for either one of them to pass?

_“It still pains you.” “Yes.”_

_"Pain is a sign you yet live."_

The flash comes over him like a lightning strike and he feels breathless with it. He looks up at her, this Widow-Morgana, the tableau the three of them make, two bound damned souls and a death omen all desperate to save each other.

“Wait. There may be a way.”

-

It is a beautiful day.

The air is clear and fresh, the salt spray throwing thousands of sparkling droplets up and catching the light. The sky is azure blue and seems endless, not a cloud to be seen and the autumn chill not yet caught up with them. The afternoon sun casts everything gold.

The edge of the ship is smooth and sturdy under his hands, and he bends, reaching a hand to catch the spray.

Far, far away in the distance, two seabirds circle each other, playing in an updraft. They rise, chasing each other around and around until they are mere specks in the blue, almost too bright to look at, soaring into the distance.

They are free. It’s strange, to feel kinship with them in that, but for the first in a long time Lancelot wonders if the faint stir in his chest might be hope.

Once, there had been another ship just like this – though his eyes had barely peeked over the side then and his hands had been bound too tightly to enjoy the surf. He has but the faintest of memories of the disappearing land of his birth, a strip of fading green in all that grey. 

He had thought all that lost, but even in the few days since his reawakening he has started to recall fragments.

Small things. A bed – his first, he thinks, and a worn yellow blanket, soft and threadbare. The smell of rosemary, and the taste of cooked fish fresh from the lake. 

His mother’s hair was gold.

There are voices nearby and he’s drawn from reminiscing by one to which he feels now attuned. He turns, subtly, to catch them out of the corner of his eye; Gawain and the girl Pym, embracing. The girl's hair is unbound in a great golden waterfall, and Lancelot feels something strange and nostalgic catch in his stomach at the sight. She buries her face in Gawain's chest and punches his arm, but the man doesn’t tense, doesn’t even respond other than to draw her in closer.

“Are you sure you can’t come with us?” She complains, her whine betraying a depth of feeling that still makes Lancelot uncomfortable with its naked honesty, its vulnerability.

Gawain chuckles a little, pats her back. “You know I’m needed here. And besides, you’ll probably have a better reception with my father if I’m absent.”

“But I’ll miss you.” Her voice is plaintive, her pout calculated. On a weaker man it might have been effective. 

Gawain merely pulls her close again, and when he speaks his voice is soft like the stroke of a hand across hair. “I’ll miss you too.”

“Find Nimue.” She orders, muffled against his chest, arms thrown around his waist. 

“As soon as I can.” He promises, then pulls back. “Morgana's clues should lead us to where she disappeared. And hey, study hard with Yeva and maybe you can come back in spring. We’ll need reinforcements by then, no doubt. Going to be our new head healer?”

She twists up her face. “Ugh. That sounds like so much work.”

Gawain laughs again, low and resonant, deeper this time, and Lancelot lets the conversation tune out, focusing instead on holding that sound to his chest and imprinting it on his mind. 

He closes his eyes and lets the sense of his surroundings flow freely – feels the rocking of the ship beneath his feet and adjusts automatically to the sway, hears the cry of distant seabirds – perhaps the two he’d seen before – and the chatter of the fey folk standing around saying their goodbyes. Smells the salt, and the seaweed on the beach, and a hundred bodies unwashed and tired and hopeful. Some are easier to pick out than others – the old witch with her strange herbs and the aroma of magic over by the other elders, the stalwart woman who had been his tent guard smelling of nut oil and leather. Percival, standing with the warriors remaining behind, all sweet boy-stink and dirt and determination and the hint of worship as he listens to the blood-metal-seasalt that is Red Spear.

Bonfire smoke, sword oil and pine and beyond that, the sweat that gathers at the base of the neck. He is hyperaware of one scent in particular, focuses upon it like a prayer until awareness fills his mind and leaves it calm and drifting. 

It’s with a jolt that he’s brought out of reverie by the thump of hands next to his on the ship’s rail.

“Thinking of leaving?” The Green Knight’s voice is still low, but there is no judgement in it. Lancelot knows that whatever he chooses, the man will not stop him. He feels the old urge to lie, to hide behind secrets and silence.

He’s learning a new way instead. This one involves more speech than he’s used in years. “Remembering the last time I was aboard ship.” Gawain makes a soft noise, a prompt, and Lancelot is surprised by his own desire to give the other man what he wants. “I was brought to these isles by ship. Long ago.” His arm is heavy as he casts it out over the water, points.

South. The only thing he remembers. He came from the south.

“Then this land is native to neither one of us.” Gawain says softly, and smiles a little rueful when Lancelot’s sharp eyes catch at him. “I was born on Orkney, where the fey ships are headed. It’s far to the north of here.”

“You’re not going back?” The question surprises them both.

“No. No, there’s nothing for me there now.” The weight of the words sit with them both, until they are swept away by the sea breeze. Somehow, the sentiment doesn’t feel as heavy with the waves under them and the blue sky shining. 

The edges of their fingers are just barely pressed against one another. Lancelot’s skin is all sparks again.

“When all this is over-“ Gawain starts, and stops, swallows. Looks down at the waves, a frown creasing his brow. Perhaps thinking better of whatever he was going to say.

Perhaps, Lancelot realises like a strange revelation, uncertain of his reception.

“What?” He asks.

The eyes that turn to meet his are soul-searching.

They’re both changed, made different by their dreamwalking, and what hatred and anger was stripped away has been replaced by a new hesitance. They’re both trying to work out what carries over, whether the intensity – the blood, the desire – has faded with the dawnlight.

Lancelot looks at the Green Knight, at _Gawain_ , and feels the rush. The flames are banked, not doused, and as they stare at one another it begins to flicker once more.

“Let us leave. We can find your people.” Gawain murmurs, quiet enough that any evesdroppers would not catch it. “When all this-“ He gestures at the boat, the sky, the gathered fey and Vikings. “Is done with. Yeva said some survived. Who better than the best hunters in the land to track them down?”

The breath feels stolen from him. “You’d come with me? If I left?”

“Why not?” The smile is slow and dark and sweet as treacle sap. “Are we not bound now? You and I.” He reaches out and places a hand on Lancelot’s chest, over his heart. It feels like a firework is let loose under his skin at the touch, heavy, grounding and searing and soaring. The wound over his heart pangs and he feels an answering tremor in the other man’s hand, the fault line which leads back to the scar’s twin on Gawain’s own breast.

 _”Half a life from each of you.”_ The intoned words of the fey nightmare that had spoken with the Green Knight like a mere woman. _“And the other halves to be collected upon death. The death of either one, you understand?”_ The tears the nightmare shed for them had been pitch, like his markings, falling black and hissing upon the grass. They left a scar on the earth even in the dream. 

_“Let death be what binds rather than rends you asunder.”_

“Lancelot.” And if it was strange once to hear his name on his own lips it is another world entirely to hear it on the Green Knight’s tongue. 

It’s beautiful. Perhaps this is how his mother spoke it. 

“I suppose I _should_ call you Lancelot? Not the Weeping Monk?”

His old name still fits, but it is discomforting now, as though he has changed shape beneath its cloth and the moniker no longer moves perfectly over him like a second skin. 

“Call me whatever you will.” 

“And if that is ‘friend’?”

“You would be the first.”

“Second.” Lancelot looks up, startled, to see that rueful, teasing smile again. “I am fairly certain Squirrel claims to be your first friend.” He cannot hold back a twitch of his own lips at that.

Gawain hesitates again, moves a little closer, presses the line of their fingers and bodies together. “And if I called you ‘lover’?” He whispers, and the hairs on the back of Lancelot’s neck rise in thrill, but something is wrong.

It’s too soft, too sweet and beautiful a word for what they are, and Lancelot cannot hold back a frown. Gawain seems to read something in it and pulls away again, that delicious line of heat departing and Lancelot breaks, catches his wrist and holds him so he cannot leave. The man stops, waits, wary.

“I am not-“ His voice cracks, and he has to pull the unravelling threads of himself back in, the edges still raw. “I can offer you nothing. No promises.” He is all sharp edges still and it is all he can do to not cut himself on them, let alone keep another safe whilst holding them close. He wants – oh, how he wants – but he cannot be soft.

“Let there be none then.” Gawain’s face is open, no guile hiding there, and Lancelot is the one searching now for some hint of deception. “But I would have you in my bed, whenever you cared to come to it. I know what you are, and I know what you have been made to be.” Lancelot does not flinch back at the reminder of his most traumatic secrets being revealed, but he wishes to. “And I want you anyway, Lancelot.”

Is it his imagination, that the man’s eyes flash brilliant green and predatory? He feels the shiver pass through him.

“You would take the murderer of your kinfolk to your bed?” He hears his own voice and hates how desperate he sounds, but he must know. This of all things. In the eyes of the fey, he is yet monstrous, the demon in the night who slew their families, burned their children.

Gawain is silent for a long time, then looks out over the wide, endless sea. In the distance, the seabirds circle, the same pair; fighting and playing in the wind.

His eyes, when they turn back, are soft, sorrowful, flicking down to his shoulder and up to the crown of his head. “You have spent a lifetime in atonement. It is enough.”

Lancelot has to turn away – not from Gawain, for there is no hiding the terrible grief and anguish that he knows must be painted across his face from a man standing so close. But the others – he would hide it from them. 

Enough. It is enough.

A small body crashes into his hip, and he starts, one hand going for a knife before he catches himself and rubs a quick hand over his eyes, turning to raise a brow at the child clinging to his cloak. 

Percival’s grin is fading – he’s sharp, there will be no hiding from this one soon either – but when Gawain closes ranks behind him the smile resurfaces. He's already talking fit to burst about the warriors, face lit up as he describes the Viking Queen's words, and Lancelot recalls Gawain's aside earlier that day that he suspected a childhood crush in the making. Fearless hands tug at his cloak. “Come on! Lady Spear says the ships have to leave – and something about the tide?”

The last farewells are being made as they descend the gangplank, and Lancelot watches Gawain accept the well-wishes, handshakes and embraces that appear his due. Nobody approaches Lancelot, of course, but it allows him time to collect himself, and it is intriguing to watch, how freely they exchange such affection. The old witch is the only one who casts an eye over him, and even he quails a little under her gaze, the weight of authority and wisdom in it. Once he might have bowed for such a gaze, but Gawain has made it clear – there will be no bowing, no kneeling here.

Gradually, the crowds part, until the skeleton crew of the ships are surrounded by the fey noncombatants and all those left ashore are the warriors. Percival’s face shines as he stands waving, his smile desperate, bright and proud and scared. “Last chance.” He hears Gawain murmur, and the boy looks up at him and nods. It’s impossible for the child to have grown any significant amount in a week, and yet Lancelot is struck looking at him by how tall Percival suddenly seems, a true squire next to his true Knight, soon to be a man. 

Perhaps Lancelot will be there to see it. The thought comes as a surprise, and a strange comfort. To anticipate a future with hope, rather than despair. 

A cheer goes up from the ships as they cast off, and there is an air of relief among both sides – Lancelot can almost smell it on the air, the knowledge that the fey are gone to safety. It will enable the warriors to fight that much harder, he knows.

They watch until the boats are disappeared into the distance, up along the coast and behind a headland, the sun beginning to set behind them and casting the scene in brilliant flame tones of orange and pink.

The warriors assemble – Lancelot expects Gawain to step to the front and lead, but it’s two others who take the stand; The Viking Queen, and the strange, stray human. They speak and it is a battle sermon, but Lancelot needs no inspiration and so he allows himself to drift to the back as the other warriors press forward.

He finds Gawain at the back of the crowd.

“It’s not just the Ice King we face, you know.” He murmurs as Lancelot falls in beside him. “The Red Paladins have joined up with his cause.”

The head of Father Carden, rolling in the dirt. The man’s throat open under Lancelot’s blade. “Then we hunt them all.”

The Green Knight’s smile is vicious, victorious, and Lancelot feels the thrill in his heart as the man reaches, telegraphing, to grab the front of his cloak and reel him in.

Alone at the back of the crowd, there are no eyes to watch their mouths meet. The kiss is hard, full of teeth, and Lancelot feels the pounding in his ears again, sees the flicker of fire behind his eyelids. He bites down on the man’s lip and smiles at the stifled groan as they pull apart.

There’s blood in his mouth – and they are both aflame. 

“We hunt together now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank everyone on the Lancewain discord for cheering me through this - you're all inspiring and great <3  
> This is the first multi-chapter fic I've finished in *checks* FOURTEEN YEARS since I was a tiny baby writing on ff.net, so the message is - it's never too late!


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